


Into Your Hideout

by CorwinOfAmber



Category: Fringe
Genre: AU, Gen, Post-Letters of Transit, Pre-Season5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 44,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorwinOfAmber/pseuds/CorwinOfAmber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened after Etta got Walter, Peter and Astrid out of the amber in "Letters of Transit"?  AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story was started the morning after "Letters of Transit" aired. Given that we didn't know if we would have a fifth season, or that the episode would be followed up on, I couldn't let the plot bunny go and it turned into my biggest fic yet.
> 
> Given that the new season hasn't aired, and one of my guesses has already been proven wrong by the show...I'm not hoping i guessed very accurately.
> 
> Published previously on another site. All the good things to my beta, DixieGirl!
> 
> Standard Disclaimer Applies: I don't own Fringe, I don't earn money from this, please don't sue me.

Staring at the rapidly receding lights of The City and fingering the misshapen lead slug that hung around her neck, Etta felt her father approach. She turned to face him, looking into sky-blue eyes that mirrored her own.

He was saying something kind and hopeful about Simon, but the exact words didn't sink in. Etta was too busy memorizing his face – she didn't want to ever forget it again.

"Do you...know me?" she asked.

A silly question, she supposed. The last time Peter Bishop had seen her, she had been barely as tall as his waist, bawling her eyes out and reaching for him as Aunt Rachel carried her away.

Surprise flickered across his features, followed by puzzlement at the question.

"I don't see how I could. I was in that amber for twenty years...you look barely old enough to..."

He stopped and looked at her intently, intuiting the meaning behind the question. In succession, recognition, shock, and then wonder crossed his features.

"Henrietta?" he asked.

Etta smiled. "Hi, Dad."

He put his hand on her face and caressed her cheek as he stared into her eyes. Etta wondered how he could still be as tall as she remembered.

Their embrace was everything Etta had imagined for twenty years.

When they broke apart minutes later, a misty-eyed Peter held her at arm's length and looked her up and down, then gently hooked the chain around her neck with a finger and pulled the necklace up to examine.

Before he turned away to join Walter and Astrid, he smirked.

"You're still wearing my bullet."

 

The safe house where Etta took them was really more of an abandoned shack, but it was the closest one she knew. As a matter of operational security, no one member knew the locations of all the bolt holes and weapons caches shared by the resistance. If one resistance member was captured, it wouldn't put the whole movement out of business.

Of course, any Observer who tried to read Etta would only see what she wanted him to, but she kept that little ability to herself, lest she be hunted. She'd never even told Simon.

Her grandfather gingerly put down the satchel he'd been hauling, and turned to Peter.

"Do you have it, Peter? The Archive?" he asked.

Peter looked at him, then cocked his head in his daughter's direction.

"Walter, this is your granddaughter, Etta..."

Walter glanced at her, then returned his gaze to Peter.

"That's nice. Do you have it?"

Peter sighed, then dug something out of his pocket, holding it up for Walter to see. "Yes, Walter, I have it."

Walter gazed at him like an owl looking at a field mouse. "Well then, you should get started, don't you think?"

Peter frowned. "Sure, fine, whatever..."

Walter turned away and fussed with the contents of his satchel. Etta was somewhat insulted on her father's behalf, but Peter seemed unfazed, so she let the matter drop. He turned to her and grinned.

"Is there some sort of computer here, Henrietta?" he asked. "And don't mind Walter... he's a little focused right now."

"Yeah, I'll get you set up," she said, motioning toward the back of the house. "Archive?"

"Uh huh," Peter showed her the small object in his hand. It was black plastic with some sort of metal connector on one end.

"Some sort of information storage?" she asked as she led him into the back. She removed a concealed panel from the wall, revealing a small plastic box which she removed and set onto a nearby card table.

"Yeah, USB thumb drive, 128 gigabyte. Before we got ambered, Walter and I collected all of the technology and some general information we thought would be useful, then encrypted it and put it on this. We're gonna make copies and spread it around to the general population."

Peter raised an eyebrow when she activated the computer and it projected its bootup sequence messages into thin air. Apparently he'd never seen a holographic tactile interface before.

"Of course, technology marches on." he said, smiling as he waved his hand in the air, playing with the unfamiliar system while the holograph cast green light and shadows across his face. "I anticipated this, and brought everything I need to make an adapter."

He sat down and emptied the contents of his many pockets onto the card table; that was when Etta remembered that Peter was an inveterate tinker. He was carrying a set of watchmaker's screwdrivers, a multi-tool, a miniature soldering iron, rolls of wire - everything he'd need to start futzing around at a moment's notice.

"Have a seat, Etta." he said. "We can catch up while I work. Unlike Walter, I can do two things at once."

"Why is granddad, so..." she shrugged. She glanced into the living room, where Walter was castigating Astrid about something, then settled into the chair next to Peter, scooting it a little closer.

"Well, you put the not-so-nice parts of his brain back. This isn't the same Walter you knew as a kid; this is the one I had when I was growing up. You get used to it."

Etta learned more about electronics and computers in an hour of watching her father work than she'd learned in her previous twenty-four years of life. Part of that was the schools' fault; creativity and independent thought weren't encouraged these days. The Observers wanted the Natives to simply consume information related to their employment, not experiment or invent.

At the end of that hour, Peter had successfully uploaded the content of the archive and was showing her what he thought were the interesting bits. 'Archive' didn't describe it adequately; it was a literal encyclopedia of subversive topics.

He seemed to be particularly amused by the section on information warfare, which he apparently had written himself.

"So the plan is to just circulate this among the general population?" she asked.

Peter nodded. "Information wants to be free. That's the mistake we made... we kept the existence of the Observers secret for too long. Of course, we were hoping everybody could just go on with their lives while we kept the monsters at bay. When they struck, we were the only ones in a position to fight them, and it wasn't much of a fight."

Etta had an epiphany and grinned.

"The people will start using the information. They'll start building weapons and writing malware to infect the infonet. They'll read and discuss the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence..."

Peter grinned and nodded. "Bright girl. And it'll all happen spontaneously. The Observers hate disorder, it repels them like garlic to a vampire. They want a nice, ordered universe where everyone does as they're told. And of course, it will all be a smokescreen."

Etta looked at him. "A distraction?"

"Yeah, this is really all just spam, something to keep them occupied while Walter builds the device that locks them out forever."

There was a long moment of silence while she digested that idea. Etta could barely remember a time before the Observers had come, before they'd taken over. She thought it would be worth any sacrifice to have that again.

Suddenly, Peter yawned, then swiped his hand through the air, shutting off the computer.

"Long day," he said, then chuckled. "Twenty years long."

Etta looked at him and decided to ask the question that had been burning for twenty years.

"Dad? How did Mom die? I remember... she just wasn't there anymore. And then Aunt Rachel raised me."

She looked over at Peter, found his face a blank mask, his posture stiff, defensive.

"I'm sorry... if it's too painful for you... " she stuttered.

"You should tell her, son." Engrossed in their conversation, neither of them had noticed Walter standing at the entrance to the small room. "She has a right to know."

"Not your call, Walter." Peter growled.

Walter shrugged and wandered away, leaving two cups of tea on the card table.

Peter sighed, and brushed his fingers across the back of her hand.

"He's right. Etta... your mother isn't dead, as far as we know. She was seriously injured, but our Observer ally took her away to recover, and keep her safe. But we don't know where, or more likely, when, she is."


	2. Chapter 2

Olivia Dunham-Bishop squinted into the afternoon sun, watched her daughter unwrap her latest birthday present, and frowned at the shiny object that Etta pulled from the small cardboard box as she held it up to the sun.

"Peter Bishop, that better not be what I think it is. Etta baby, come here..." Olivia said.

The Dunham and Bishop families were gathered, on a beautiful autumn afternoon, in the backyard of the Bishop household, just off the campus of Harvard University. It was Henrietta's fourth birthday; Peter and Walter had gone all out with the decorations, turning the already elaborate play area into a fairytale castle, complete with a moat and drawbridge. How they'd done it right under Olivia's nose, she'd never understand.

"Don't get up, Aunt Liv!" Ella, now twelve years old, crouched down beside her little cousin and examined the gift, a necklace from her father.

"Uh, it looks like a bullet." Ella wrinkled her nose in disgust, "A used one."

Rachel, balancing a paper plate with a piece of cherry pie with one hand, did a double take, alternating looking at Peter and then to Ella and Etta, almost dropping her pie in the process.

"You didn't!" she said, "Is that...?"

Peter nodded. "I did. That's my lucky bullet. Now it's Etta's lucky charm."

Rachel made a disgusted noise. "Ewwww!"

Ella spoke up, trying to diffuse the miasma of tension that suddenly filled the air. "It isn't gory or anything."

Walter, mouth full of pie, spoke up. "It truly was a miracle."

The elderly scientist put down his plate and fork. He seized a large orange out of a nearby bowl, and took a straw out of an abandoned soda can.

"The bullet passed through his thoracic cavity..."

At this point in his explanation, Walter covered one end of the straw with his thumb, and violently thrust it completely through the orange.

"...and missed every vital organ, leaving Peter unharmed."

Walter put down the now impaled orange and went back to eating his pie. A small amount of juice and pulp dripped onto the picnic table. He didn't notice the stunned silence that fell over the party.

"Thanks for the demonstration, Walter." Peter said dryly, "I wasn't unharmed, I was sore for a month...but considering what should have happened, I'm not complaining."

"Etta, come here." Olivia insisted, beckoning to her daughter.

Her little girl obediently walked over and showed her mother her new necklace. Olivia shuddered with revulsion when she touched the bullet that had pierced her husband's chest, just a few months before. But she regained her composure quickly.

"They'll never let her wear it in school. Zero tolerance and all that." She said aside to Peter, who merely smirked.

"What they don't know..." Peter said.

Somehow sensing the gist of the conversation, the four year old in question tugged the necklace out of Olivia's fingers.

"Daddy gave it to me!" she insisted, and defiantly walked to Peter's side, her tone and posture precisely mimicking Olivia's own when angered, making the gathered family laugh.

"She gets that from you." Peter winked at her.

Olivia rolled her eyes.

Peter approached from behind as Olivia cleaned the grill, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"So, are you mad at me, about the necklace?" he whispered into her ear.

"No...it's just..." She tossed down the wire brush she was holding and turned in the space of his arms to look up at his face.

"...I hate thinking about that day. Now every time I look at Etta, I will, because you know she's never gonna take it off. She's such a daddy's girl."

Peter gave his most annoying smirk, the one that she still wanted to slap off his face. "That bullet didn't kill me. I figure, other bullets will see it, and know to stay away."

Olivia laughed despite herself, and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"Ass..." she said, squeezing his to emphasize the point.

Peter leaned a little closer. "So am I going to get lucky tonight? Work on making that little boy?"

Olivia shivered suddenly, and stiffened in his arms, cocking her head slightly as if listening.

"Liv? You all right?" Peter, always tuned to her moods, had sensed the change instantly.

Olivia shook her head. "Yeah, it's just...I'm having déjà vu."

The odd feeling of...disconnectedness grew within her, until it consumed everything. Peter faded away and she wandered off, into white fog that suddenly cloaked everything.

"This...isn't happening now." Olivia muttered to herself, "Is this a memory? Or a dream?"

Olivia felt herself fade away.

Holding the cooing, squirming bundle that was their infant daughter, just getting a good look at her, Olivia couldn't help it - she started to tear up.

"What?" Peter asked, walking through the living room with a stuffed laundry basket in his arms, on his way to the washing machine in the basement. His question was delivered with the resigned tone of a husband and father too long at the mercy of his wife's hormonal mood swings.

"She has your eyes. It just..." Olivia stopped before she started actually sobbing.

Peter smiled, put the basket down on the floor, then he walked over and crouched beside her.

"They'll change color soon. She'll probably have green eyes, like yours."

"I know. I don't want them to change." Olivia said.

Peter pulled his cell phone out, and snapped a picture of Henrietta, careful to get a good shot of her blue eyes, and a teary but joyful Olivia holding her. Then he kissed his daughter and wife in turn before standing again.

"At least we'll have a picture," he said, as he picked up the basket and headed for the stairs.

Olivia felt another wave of déjà vu overtake her, and gritted her teeth.

"Damn it!" she muttered, "This has to mean something..."

Olivia's eyes snapped open and roamed the oddly lit room. Given the dreamscape she'd just been in, she'd fully expected to wake up, back in the isolation tank in the Harvard lab. Why the hell she would subject herself to that again, she didn't know.

She was in a small room, reclining in something like a dentist's or barber's chair, wearing an odd fluffy robe, made of a cotton-like material, but somehow she knew it wasn't cotton. There were various wires and tubes attached to her body.

"Hospital again," she muttered.

Dim red light streamed through a window at the top of the nearest wall, casting eerie, blood colored shadows on the walls. Instead of the expected beeping, the medical equipment attached to her body sighed and moaned and pulsed, making the scene even more grotesque.

Olivia began removing leads and pulling needles out of her body. The nasal feeding tube was the worst, but she buckled down and got it done, giving herself just a slight nosebleed.

She searched the room, padding around in bare feet. The wires and tubes led to ports in a nearby wall. Ventilation was supplied from a patch on a different wall, cool air flowing through microscopic holes, and she found another patch on the opposite wall, with a slight suction. The only illumination was the window at the top of the wall.

There were no doors.

A soft voice came from behind her.

"You are awake."

Olivia spun, crouched, hands raised in a defensive posture, instinctively ready to beat the hell out of whomever she might encounter. A pale man, about her height, stood before her, wearing a grey suit, tie and fedora.

"September," she sighed, and relaxed.

"Yes." the Observer replied.

Olivia waited for September to explain the situation, but he merely stared at her. When it became obvious that no unprompted explanation would be forthcoming, she gritted her teeth in exasperation.

There was a reason they usually had Peter deal with September. He had more patience for the insane.

"Where am I?" Olivia finally asked him.

September cocked his head at her , then gently took her elbow.

"Come with me," he said.

They walked through the wall.

Olivia leaned against the exterior wall of the ash grey building and squinted at the huge orange orb that dominated the sky. They were on a rocky, barren plain, and a warm wind blew from the southwest. She thought she could see a ruined city in the distance, but that could have been her imagination.

She couldn't help thinking that Peter would have been impressed by the view. But to her, it was just another line on her growing list of problems to solve.

"Don't stare at the sun too long," September offered unhelpfully. "It has begun fusing Helium instead of Hydrogen, and expanded past the orbit of Mercury."

"What happened?" she asked.

September cocked at his head at her, then tried to mimic her body language by leaning against the wall. It only succeeded in making him look even more stiff and uncomfortable.

"Bell betrayed you to the Observers. You were injured in the attack that followed, and Peter convinced me to bring you here, to heal."

Olivia nodded, still staring at the orange sun. That certainly sounded like something Peter would do.

"What happened? After you brought me here? Are Peter and Walter alive? Astrid?"

"I do not know." September said.

That got Olivia to turn away from the sun.

"What do you mean, you don't know? You can walk through space and time."

"Yes, but if I did, there is a chance the Observers could detect me. Peter made me promise to keep you safe. I haven't left this place."

Olivia thought for a moment.

"So, whenever you move through time, there's a chance you'll be detected? Can we make one trip, at least?"

September looked at the sun. "Yes. But there is still a chance I will be detected."

Olivia thought for a moment. Going back to immediately after the attack when she was injured would be very dangerous, but it would also have the greatest chance of locating her friends and family.

"Let's go." she said.

They appeared in the lab in the dark of night, and it took Olivia's eyes a few minutes to adjust to the change in illumination. When they did, she gasped.

The wall of amber glowed eerily in the moonlight leaking through the windows, contrasting the human shapes trapped within. She rushed forward and peered into the amber, to see Peter's frozen face.

"No..." she whispered. Peter's arm was stretched forward, hand mere inches from freedom. She pressed her own hand against the surface, wishing she could curl her fingers with his.

September quietly walked past her to examine the other shapes caught in amber. He stopped and peered at the first.

"Doctor Bishop, with Astrid Farnsworth a meter behind." he reported. Then he walked to the last shape.

"Doctor Bell." he announced.

"Are they still alive?" Olivia asked.

September looked at her, seemed to consider his words carefully. "Technically? No."

Olivia glared at him. "They were able to revive people caught in amber for years on the other side."

September nodded. "Under optimal conditions, with the proper equipment. These...are not optimal conditions and we do not have the proper equipment. Best to leave them be, for now."

Olivia sighed, then pressed her forehead against the amber, a foot from her husband, whispered, "Peter? I don't know if you can hear me. But I'm going to get you out, I'm going to get everybody out, it will just take time. I love you."

Behind her, September cocked his head, listened.

"We have been discovered...there is an armed patrol outside. Come here, Olivia."

When she didn't move immediately, he stepped forward and seized her arm, earning himself a murderous glare.

"We need to go." September said, and they went.

A "day" and twenty years later, Olivia sat watching a campfire she had built in the woods overlooking a changed Boston. There were few motor vehicles in the streets below. Those that were there were some sort of high efficiency electric cars.

September had procured her some new clothes – blue jeans, a navy tank top and a fake leather jacket. He hadn't gotten her a weapon, but then she didn't really need one these days.

He had also gotten them a small supply of some sort of food bar. The biodegradable wrappers on the bars boasted of their nutritional value, had a picture of an observer stoically munching, and no list of ingredients. They actually didn't taste bad, and September and Olivia munched them as they stared at the fire.

The phrase "Soylent Green is people!" wailed by a horrified Charleton Heston kept repeating itself in her head. But she munched anyway, and listened to some sort of nightbird coo nearby.

"September?" she asked, finally bringing up a subject that had been bothering her all day. "How do they track you?"

The Observer looked across the fire at her. "I do not know. It should not be possible."

"And yet, they do track you." Olivia finished her food bar, and started working a kink out of her neck, tilting her head from one side to the other.

"Yes." September replied.

"Could they have bugged you?" Seeing September's puzzled look, she rephrased her question, "Put a tracking device on you?"

The Observer considered that.

"I do not think that is possible. Unless..."

September stared at her.

"Unless?" she prompted, a minute later.

"Unless the device was implanted when I became a member of the science team."

September thought in silence for another moment.

"If the hypothetical device only activated when I moved through time, I would be unable to detect it."

Olivia nodded. "I've been thinking about this all day. How they always seemed to find us after you arrived."

The nightbirds stopped singing. Olivia looked up, alarmed, September stared at her, puzzled. She was about to whisper a warning when a shot rang out from down the slope of the hill. The bullet struck September in the back, exiting his chest, and the Observer pitched forward, almost into the fire.

Olivia dropped to her hands and knees and crawled around the fire, turned him over. The pale, bald man was gasping for breath.

"I am sorry." he gasped.

"September, go!" Olivia hissed. She heard the crunch of boots in grass, coming up the hill.

The Observer nodded, and coughed, bright blood bubbling up from the hole in his chest. From within his jacket, he produced a small, antique looking pistol, and passed it into Olivia's hands with another nod. Then he disappeared.

Olivia put the pistol in the waistband of her pants, and sat up, Indian style, careful not to make sudden movements.

Armed men surrounded her, followed by a tall, thin man wearing a grey suit, beige tie and fedora. The new Observer held a bulky, black handgun pointed at her and surveyed the scene placidly.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Olivia turned her emerald gaze upon him, the tingling sensation in her chest already building. She'd done this before, summoned fire, but never intentionally, never directed by her will. The Observer blanched and raised his weapon, but it was too late.

"Burn." Olivia said, as the air around her ignited into white-hot flame.


	3. Chapter 3

Dusk. With the sun slowly sinking over the waters of Reiden Lake, Peter reclined in an antique wooden lounge chair on the beach with Olivia sitting between his outstretched legs, leaning back against his chest. He kept one eye on Walter and the kids playing in the surf, while he brushed out Olivia's long golden hair and then began to tie it into a French braid.

Olivia let him be for a few minutes, before asking the obvious question. "When did you learn to braid hair?"

Her tone was a mix of amusement, teasing and awe.

"Ella taught me in another timeline." Peter replied, "She also liked to paint my toenails a manly shade of orange."

Olivia snorted, unable to decide whether or not he was pulling her leg. She leaned back and craned her neck to kiss his cheek fondly.

A chill wind blew in from the lake, causing some errant strands of hair to escape Peter's braiding fingers and float into a loose halo. Olivia shivered, then seized the woolen blanket laying in the sand beside them and pulled it over them, eyes on the silhouettes of Walter and their three children.

When she spoke again, her fond, teasing tone belied the content of her words.

"You know this isn't happening, Peter. You're not here, braiding my hair. We're not watching our children play on the beach with Walter. This is all...impossible."

Peter smiled in the twilight, finished the braid by feel.

"The word impossible gets misused a lot, Olivia. People use it when they don't want to try something difficult, or they've lost hope. But impossible things happen all the time. It should have been impossible for us to meet in the first place, given that I was born in another universe. I shouldn't exist now, since September didn't save me from drowning in this timeline. I probably shouldn't have survived being ambered for twenty years. So when people talk to me about impossibility, I know they don't know what they're talking about."

Olivia looked at him over her shoulder, squeezed his thigh under the blanket.

"You know you're dreaming, don't you?" she asked.

Peter nodded. "It's how I know you're still out there, somewhere."

 

Olivia's lips curled in a wry smile. "I dream about you, too."

Etta was their contact with the rest of the resistance. Weekly, she carried a pack full of memory cards into the city proper and distributed them among the Natives. The cards each had a copy of the Archive, plus a bit of rah-rah from Peter as the Voice of the Resistance.

Of course, Peter wasn't stupid enough to use his own face and voice in those communiqués. He'd appropriated September's likeness and voice, copying it from the various recorded interviews they'd made years before.

September's monotonic visage exhorting the Natives to "Hug an Observer today!" had gone viral, and Etta had reported that people were actually walking up and embracing their bald tyrants. Predictably, the borderline-autistic Observers became paranoid. They were now afraid to be seen in public, lest they be hugged repeatedly, and when they did go out, it was with a phalanx of armed guards, reinforcing the image of them as armed oppressors.

They were playing right into Peter's hands.

Peter Bishop, in a tee shirt and jeans, trotted downstairs, wincing when the stairs creaked loudly, letting everyone in the house know exactly what he was doing. Which was worry about his daughter.

Originally, Peter had intended on moving them from safe house to safe house for security purposes. Walter had objected, almost violently, loudly complaining that he needed adequate lab space if they wanted him to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. Finally, Peter had conceded, and Etta had located them an abandoned two story Victorian on the outskirts of Boston.

The house had been used as a weapons dump by the resistance – dump being the operative word. The roof was almost bare of shingles, there were holes in the interior walls and floorboards missing upstairs. But it had a full, finished and well maintained basement, and it's layout was similar to the original Chez Bishop, so it felt like home to the Bishop family. Peter and Astrid were gradually getting the house into shape by scavenging from other abandoned domiciles in the neighborhood.

Peter reached the main floor and walked into the kitchen. The entire downstairs smelled like baking bread, which certainly added to the hominess factor.

"She's not back yet," Astrid said, as she opened the the door of the oven to take out the loaf she was baking. "I'll send her up as soon as she gets home."

Peter looked startled, then started to open his mouth to say something dryly sardonic, but Astrid interrupted.

"Yes, I can read your thoughts." she said, "Walter's been dosing me with Cortexiphan."

Peter rolled his eyes, turned to go downstairs to check on Walter, but Astrid's face softened and she caught his sleeve.

"Look, I know you worry about Etta." she said, "I do too. But it's still an hour until curfew, and even if something happens, she's been doing this for a long time. She'll be fine."

Peter chuckled. "I know. I just can't help it. Hope I don't drive you nuts."

Astrid smiled. "Believe me, I understand. Here...Walter wanted a cup of tea. And take him a slice of bread while you're at it."

"...so I don't know if I should start going by Bishop or stay with Blake. My dad says the choice is up to me."

 

Etta sat on the floor of the darkened Harvard lab, back resting against one of the brick support columns, her stuffed pack on the floor beside her. Before her was the stuck-in-amber form of her partner, friend and mentor, Simon Foster.

Etta had been there for the better part of the last hour, just like she had been once a week for the last two months. She had gotten into a habit of confiding in Simon while they'd been partners in Fringe Division, and she saw no reason to discontinue the conversation just because he'd gotten himself into this situation, rescuing her father, for which she was more grateful than she could express in words.

The main thing Etta had learned in her short life (the only thing, really) was that you had to make the extra effort to take care of your friends and family, because they took care of you in turn. And visiting an ambered friend for an hour a week was hardly an imposition.

Her watch beeped, and she stood up, touched a kiss to her fingers and touched her hand to the amber.

"Well, I have to go. Curfew in an hour. I'll see you next week, same time, same place."

Naturally, the basement looked like a mad scientist's lab. The difference being that this version of Walter had finally embraced the usefulness of the computer, at least for doing calculations and rendering his designs. However, he still had a tendency to write on the walls, using whatever was at hand as a stylus.

Walter was sitting at a workbench against the wall opposite the stairs, watching a holographic scale model of the device slowly rotate in midair, and taking notes on a tablet computer.

"Here Walter, I brought you some tea, and Astrid baked some bread. Honey wheat, I think." Peter said, as he placed the cup and plate of bread on the workbench beside him.

Walter ignored him for a moment, until he finished tracing some writing on the table. Then he turned to look at Peter, and not a hint of recognition showed in his features.

"Thank you. I have a list of parts you'll need to fabricate or obtain for me." Walter took a pad of paper off the bench and passed it to Peter without looking at him, then picked up his cup of tea and took a sip.

Peter sighed. Walter's monomania had been all consuming since they'd gotten out of the amber, but according to Etta, it was only around Peter. Apparently, Walter acted fairly normal around his granddaughter, and Peter had no idea what to make of that.

Ah, well, there was always one topic Walter would discuss.

"It's basically another version of the machine, isn't it?" Peter asked, watching the model over Walter's shoulder.

Walter looked up at him and nodded.

"In a manner of speaking...actually, you can think of it as the opposite of the Wave Sync Device. That machine opened doors between universes. This one...closes them, permanently. Basically it takes a part of whatever universe it happens to reside in, and twists it on itself. Like a four dimensional Möbius strip."

"It creates a pocket universe. Cut off from all the rest." Peter said.

"That's a crude way of putting it, but yes. If we can lure the Observers into proximity of it, when it activates it will lock them away forever."

Walter turned and looked at him, seeming to actually see Peter, for the first time since he'd entered the basement.

"Peter...We'll need anti-matter to power it. We need to recover the bombs we hid."

Peter sighed. "I've got a plan, Walter. We'll have it soon. Just a few weeks."

Walter nodded, and turned back to his work. "Good."

"Etta should be back soon." Peter stated as he turned toward the stairs. He didn't see the smile that softened Walter's features.

 

Peter used his nervous energy by laying floorboards on the second floor landing. It was detail work with his hands, something he enjoyed, and he thought sometimes that in a previous life he'd been a carpenter or bricklayer. Then he realized that somewhere in the multi-verse, there had to be a Peter Bishop, stonemason, and chuckled.

Maybe that guy didn't have to put up with all the bullshit, could just work and have his family in peace.

Peter wished him well.

Half an hour later, Peter heard Astrid call from downstairs, "The prodigal daughter returns!", and he sighed with relief, bounded downstairs and embraced his daughter.

"I'm all right, Dad!" Etta laughed, "Right on time!"

"How did it go?" Peter asked, smiling proudly at her.

"It went great. I think we're going to have to make more copies of the archive before next week. I've got a big list of people who want them. And..."

Etta removed her pack and pulled out a package. "I bought a month's supply, at least."

Peter smirked. "Red vines? You'd better go downstairs, he's probably gone into withdrawal..."

 

Walter looked down, startled, when a package of red vines landed on the workbench in front of him, tossed there by Etta.

"You're welcome, granddad." Etta said, sitting in the empty chair beside him.

"Oh, thank you very much, my dear!" Walter said, then tore open the package, and handed Etta one piece of red licorice before starting to munch on a handful himself.

"You know, I always used to sneak you Red Vines when you were a little girl," Walter said, with a conspiratorial wink.

"I remember that!" Etta said. "Mom must have wondered about my appetite."

Etta listened politely as Walter explained, in dense scientific terminology, what he was working on today. She was lucky to understand about half of it, and once again blamed it on the vocational nature of education since the Observers took over.

"Granddad... why you acting so distant with my dad? I remember when I was a kid, you didn't act like that. The two of you were inseparable. I know Simon basically did reverse brain surgery on you, but that shouldn't change your attitude toward your son."

Several emotions scurried their way across Walter's face, before it finally settled on a frown.

"I'm simply trying to maintain my objectivity, dear. I've...done things that caused a lot of misery out of my love for your father. And here I am again, working on a machine that could be used as a weapon of mass destruction. I have to make logical, rational choices in this."

Etta implored him with eyes.

"It's hurting him. You don't know how much. You barely talk to him."

Walter turned away, stonefaced.

"Ask your father about what happened when he turned on the Machine. Then you'll understand why I'm acting the way I am."

Etta glared at him, got up and went upstairs, her angry footsteps echoing in through the basement lab.

 

Peter turned and smiled at Etta when she entered his attic bedroom/workshop.

"How's your granddad?" he asked, curious.

Etta shook her head. "Walter is being Walter."

Peter frowned. "What did he do now? When did you stop calling him granddad?"

"Just now. I'll start calling him granddad again, when he starts treating you like his son," Etta said, a hint of anger in her tensed jaw.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"So what have you been up to, besides the usual?" Etta finally asked, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Peter.

"Hmm. Tinkering, as usual. But I think you'll like what I've been working on."

Peter swiveled in his chair and swiped his hand to the right and up, activating the holographic interface to the computer. Another few swipes, and an image began to form in mid air, over the computer. Etta leaned closer for a better view.

"I found an old picture on my phone. I decided to render it in 3-d for you." he smiled.

Etta watched the image draw itself for a few seconds, and then gasped. "Is that mom?"

"Yeah. I took this when you were only a month old." Peter chuckled happily at the memory. "Olivia was getting weepy over the fact that you had my eyes. I took a picture because I figured they'd change to green. I guess I scored a bullseye in the genetic turkey shoot, because they stayed blue."

Etta watched the picture finish rendering, then begin rotating, feeling her eyes moisten. The expression on Peter's face wasn't helping at all. They watched in happy silence for a few minutes.

"Dad? I have a question for you, and I don't want you to get mad at me."

Peter looked at her, studied her face for a moment, then nodded. "Okay."

Etta reached down and squeezed his hand. "What will you do if we never find mom?"

Peter averted his gaze, swiped his hand and the picture faded away.

"Then I guess I'll be celibate for the rest of my life. Your mother is the only woman for me."

"Dad...I just want you to be happy."

Peter looked at Etta and smiled. "I still dream about her."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Peter searched for the right words, "our lives were entwined, on a fundamental level, before we even knew each other. If Olivia were dead, I'd know it, believe me."

Etta looked skeptical, but nodded. "Okay. Well, I guess it's time to get to bed."

She started to get up, because Peter's hand caught her arm.

"I almost forget. I made something else for you."

Peter stood, and took a very cobbled-together looking device off the top shelf of his work table. He handed it to Etta, who examined it briefly. It looked like a thick metal rod, with dangling metallic bits pointing in all directions, and a large switch built into the handle.

Under her father's tutelage, Etta was getting much better at electronics. But she had no clue what the purpose of the device could be, so she just raised her eyebrows and looked at Peter, waiting for an explanation.

"It's what you're going to use to get your friend Simon out of the amber. Let me show you how to use it."


	4. Chapter 4

The problem with nuking your enemies with your mind, Olivia realized just now, was that you don't get to loot the bodies afterward.

Surveying the carnage her pyrokinetic assault had caused, she now understood why it had scared Walter and Bell into discontinuing the Cortexiphan trials. There was nothing left of the patrol that had surrounded her but ashes and charred bone, and the hill was still burning.

The display of psychic might had also left her ravenously hungry, and somewhat dizzy, although she supposed the nausea could be from the smell of burning flesh.

She sprinted down the far side of the hill and found a tree to lean against. As she finished off the last two of the silly food bars, she examined September's "Magic Air Gun", as Peter liked to call it. It appeared to be a Second World War vintage pocket automatic, a Walther or Mauser or some such, but it wasn't, and any firearms expert would know it.

Olivia risked firing it once, and it did an admirable job of blowing a small sapling to splinters, with almost no recoil. Then she placed the pistol in the pocket of her jacket, and started to walk into the surprisingly dark city. Although waiting to see how long it took the Observers and their collaborators to respond to a missing patrol would be instructive, she couldn't chance being caught again.

She crept through darkened city streets, keeping to back alleys, going around intersections, avoiding the few patrols she encountered, thinking of it as doing recon in enemy-occupied territory. It helped a lot that she knew Boston like the back of her hand, and that he city hadn't changed very much from her memory.

In a way, that was disturbing. She didn't know exactly how far September had moved them forward in time, but she knew it must be decades, at least. Things should have changed more.

Olivia was wandering down a pitch black side street, two hours later, when a male voice came from an alley ahead and to her right.

"You know, being out after curfew can get you into a lot of trouble. But then, you've never been one to avoid it."

The voice seemed familiar, but Olivia seized the Magic Air Gun in her pocket. "Come out where I can see you," she ordered.

The man who stepped out of the alley was about her height, in his early to mid '60s, with curly hair and beard. He wore jeans, a dark button up shirt and a brown leather jacket, and knew to keep his hands where she could see them.

"Hi Cupcake. You want to bowl a few frames and talk about current events?" he said with a broad smile.

Recognition staggered her.

"S-Sam?" Olivia asked, "Sam Weiss?"

"Like a bad habit, I keep showing up at times of great stress. Of course, it's been twenty years since I've seen you, so I guess I'm not too terrible."

Olivia shook her head and relaxed. Her entire life seemed to be full of synchronicity and odd coincidences. "Lead the way, Sam."

 

Olivia cursed loudly as her ball thundered down the alley, like Thor releasing his hammer, and went straight into the gutter.

The bowling alley was pitch dark, except for the single lane that Sam and Olivia were using for their game. Apparently, Sam was now the owner of the place, and apparently people still bowled. But it was four in the morning, and they had the place to themselves.

Behind her, she heard Sam chuckle. "Relax! It's not like we're keeping score."

She turned and walked back toward Sam, sat down in a hard plastic chair beside him.

"Okay, Sam. I've humored you long enough. Out with it. You shouldn't even know me, in this timeline."

Sam waggled his eyebrows at her, then scratched his beard.

"Yeah. Funny story. One morning, about twenty four years ago, I woke up with a bunch of memories of things that had never happened. The first time we met after your accident, the Machine, the end of the world, all of that. So, naturally, I thought something was seriously wrong. Brain tumor or something. I spent the next six months having every medical test known to man, and they all came back negative."

Sam paused to sip from his can of beer, then sighed.

"So I voluntarily committed myself to Saint-Claire's..."

Olivia gave a sympathetic sigh. "Sam..."

Weiss shook his head, waved his hand like it was nothing.

"I'm fine, Olivia. Well, I spent three years there. In my last week, a friend of yours came to see me. About my height, bald, wore a grey suit and fedora..."

"September." Olivia couldn't keep the annoyance from her voice.

"Yeah, Mr. September. He told me that I wasn't insane, that everything I remembered had happened as I remembered it, but it had been..."

Olivia nodded. "Overwritten. Like what happened to me."

"Exactly. He also said that on this day, in 2036, I would meet you again, and that I should help you. Then he disappeared into thin air, which didn't help my opinion of my sanity at all."

Olivia nodded again. It was good to finally know what year it was, but the enormity of what had happened to her was starting to sink in. Twenty years, literally gone by in a flash. Henrietta would be twenty four now, if she still lived. And could Peter and the others have survived two decades, encased in Amber?

If they hadn't...she would be sure to find a way avenge them.

Sam squeezed her shoulder and smiled. "How can I help?"

Olivia shrugged. "Tell me what the situation is, then I'll know how you can help."

Sam sighed, and stood up to grab his bowling ball as he spoke.

"Well, as you no doubt know already, the Observers are in charge. There aren't enough of them to really control everything though. They have their Loyalist allies, of course."

Sam sent his ball rolling down the alley and turned back to her. Another strike.

"They really only control the cities. If something happens in East Podunk, they don't really care, as long they're still in charge."

He returned to his seat beside her.

"Now, as far as society goes, the main principle is sustainability. Wind, Solar, Hydroelectric, Geothermal power. They're talking about putting solar collectors in orbit and beaming the power down as microwaves, but that will take a few years. Hydroponic grown vegetables. Cultured protein grown in vats, instead of raising cows or pigs..."

Olivia made a disgusted face.

"Oh, it's not that bad." Sam took a sip of beer.

Olivia looked at him, still frowning. "Really?"

He shook his head and made a face. "Nah, it's terrible. Just disgusting. Instead of beef or chicken or pork, it's kind of a mix of all three."

"This would interest you, though. Fringe Division is in charge of policing the Natives. I guess they had enough respect for you guys at the end that they left it in place."

Olivia raised her eyebrows. "Fringe Division? Who's in charge?"

"Your man Broyles. Yeah, interesting."

Olivia stood up and grabbed her ball from the bin as she thought about that. Did that make her old boss and mentor an ally or an enemy? Right now, she couldn't risk contacting him, at least not directly.

She sent the ball thundering down the alley again, straight into the gutter, making Sam chuckle. Then he continued.

"What else? Oh, we have a cashless economy now. Everyone has a chip implanted, that keeps track of your credits and debits. It really has cut down on petty crime and mugging. Of course, a lot of bartering takes place outside the cities."

Sam got up and threw another strike, as casually as scratching himself. Olivia was starting to get annoyed with his bowling skills, her competitive nature coming to the fore.

"Is there some sort of resistance movement?" she asked.

She got up, grabbed her ball, and started lining her shot up carefully.

Sam finished his beer, tossed the empty can in the trash. "Yeah. But they're not really concerned with opposing the Observers, at least not directly. They mostly terrorize the Loyalists. Of course, there are Loyalists groups that try to hunt down the resistance, too."

"Can you get me in touch with them?" Olivia asked.

Plans were starting to form in her mind. Not clear ones, not yet. But she had a set of steps to take...towards something.

"Yeah, I know some people. I'll set something up, but it will take a few days."

Sam watched as she finalized lining up her throw and released the ball. When it made it halfway, it began to lazily curve toward the gutter, but Olivia reached through the ether with what she increasingly thought of as her "third arm", correcting the ball's spin, guiding it back on course. Strike. She turned and grinned at Sam.

He raised an eyebrow. "Cheater. So what are you planning?"

Olivia remembered a sci-fi movie Peter always loved, one of his favorites, and one he somehow always managed to work into conversation.

"I aim to misbehave." she stated.

 

Olivia woke from her Sunday morning doze to the pleasant aroma of brewing coffee and frying bacon. She stretched lazily, and right on cue, Peter entered her bedroom, dressed in boxer shorts and a tee shirt, hair adorably messed up, a large mug of steaming coffee in his hand.

"My Queen is awake!" he announced, as he crouched at her bedside. He carefully handed her the mug, then kissed her.

"Good morning!" Olivia said with a smile, once their lips parted.

"Good morning," Peter replied. "Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes. Don't get up."

He disappeared from the bedroom. Olivia sat up and sipped her coffee and listened to pans clatter and silverware tinkle in the kitchen, then Peter reappeared, carrying a tray piled with food in one hand, his own mug of coffee in the other, and joined her in bed.

"Toast, bacon, scrambled eggs with a sprinkle of Parmesan. There's juice if you want, but I couldn't balance it all on the tray." Peter said.

"What did I do to deserve this?" Olivia teased him, as she snatched a piece of toast off the tray.

"Well, you are pregnant with our second child," Peter said, as he nibbled on a strip of bacon.

"Silly boy, this is our first!" she continued teasing.

Peter frowned, and the atmosphere changed instantly.

"That's funny... Maybe I had you confused with someone else?"

Olivia peered at him, worry creasing her features. "Peter?"

Peter shook his head, as if clearing his mind, then continued. "...anyways, Ella called. She said she'd be here for lunch , and it sounded like she had something important to tell us..."

Olivia shook her head, growing more alarmed. "Peter? Ella and Rachel are in Chicago, we see them maybe once every six months..."

She pressed the back of her hand to Peter's forehead to check him for fever.

Peter shook his head, growing agitated. "Hon, Rachel died...Ella has lived with us for ten years..."

Olivia's alarm level zoomed into the stratosphere, and phrases like "psychotic break" and "fugue state" started echoing in her head. On the nightstand, her phone started buzzing, and she snatched it up and answered it by reflex.

"Olivia, wake up." said Sam Weiss.

Startled, Olivia snapped her eyes open. She lay on a small cot in the basement of the bowling alley. Sam Weiss sat in a plastic chair nearby.

"Sorry if I startled you." Sam said "...you were thrashing around so much, I was afraid you'd fall out of bed, and hurt yourself."

"Thanks."

Sam stared at her in a very familiar manner.

"You were dreaming about Peter." He said it as a statement of fact, not a question.

Olivia sat up, rubbed her eyes, and nodded.

"Yeah. It happens whenever we're apart for more than a few days. I dream about him, he dreams about me."

"The same dream?" he asked.

Olivia shook her head.

Sam just stared at her oddly.

"What?" she asked, frowning.

Some days, Sam's guru act was really annoying.

"Have you tried... communicating through the dreams?"

"That's cra..." Olivia started, then interrupted herself, "What am I saying...I live crazy."

Sam grinned. "Maybe you should try it, next time."

Olivia nodded. "Maybe you're right. Hey, do you have any coffee?"

"Yeah." He tossed her a box of Coffee Chews. She looked at it and made a face. "Seriously?"

"Growing coffee takes a lot of effort. These have all of the caffeine, and some of the flavor. You get used to it."

She tried one piece, made a disgusted face. "No, I won't."

Sam chuckled. "You can take a shower while I make breakfast upstairs. Then I'll go talk to some people I know in the resistance."

"Sam? Do you have a map of the Boston area?" she asked.

"Yeah. I'll have it ready for you upstairs."

Olivia found the shower annoying rather than relaxing. Apparently, water use was on a timer, two minutes, and if you wanted longer you had to pay extra. She didn't have an implanted chip, so she got to enjoy a two minute, ice cold shower, and walked back upstairs shivering, with her hair still wet.

She found the map spread out on a table. Olivia grabbed a pencil and started marking off coordinates from memory, as Sam brought her a plate of pancakes. When she finished, there were seven locations marked by X's.

"What are those?" Sam asked, as he sat down to eat.

"Anti-matter bombs. Do you think the Resistance would be interested in having a few?"


	5. Chapter 5

Simon Foster had heard once that people caught in Amber had their last thoughts and feelings frozen in time, experiencing their fear and anguish on a constant loop for the years or decades they were ambered. It was intended as a horror story, and a caution.

Simon, however, was ambered with hope for a better future in his heart, and the absolute certainty that Etta would save him. The experience wasn't horrifying at all.

As the amber dissolved around him, Foster pitched forward into a pair of waiting arms that cushioned his fall to the hard concrete floor. The arms turned him upright and cradled him; after returning to full consciousness, the first thing he saw was Etta's angelic visage.

"Hi." Simon said, grinning.

"Hi." Etta replied with a smile. "You don't look so bad. Like you just took a long nap."

Her thumb stroked his cheek. Simon heard someone else bustling about in the dimly lit lab, gathering equipment.

"How long?" he asked.

"Four months. Sorry it took us so long." Etta kept stroking his cheek, a broad smile on her face. "But it's all coming together..."

"Etta, princess. I hate to interrupt, but can you hold his arm out..."

That voice was deep, male, and coming from Simon's left. He turned his head and saw a tall man, with slightly curly brown hair, in blue jeans and an ugly plaid shirt, crouching beside him. He had a black cylindrical device in his hands.

Etta extended Simon's arm toward him, whispered "Sorry..." in his ear.

The man touched the end of the device to his arm, thumb on a bright red button.

"Hey!" Simon said, "That's a..."

He yelped when 30,000 volts of electricity surged through his arm.

"Taser." he said, "We needed to disable your tracker."

He extended his hand. "Peter Bishop. Thanks for all you did for us."

Simon winced, and flexed the tingling digits of his left hand. When Simon took the offered hand, Peter helped him to his feet.

"Thank you for not leaving me there for twenty years," Simon replied.

Bishop chuckled, then turned to gaze upon the still-ambered form of William Bell.

"Dad? Are we gonna get him out of the amber, too?" Etta asked.

Peter shook his head. "No. I like knowing exactly where the shifty old bastard is. His betrayal is why Olivia isn't here right now." He turned back to Etta and Simon. "Come on. It's just a short walk to where we'll spend the night."

Simon stared at Etta. "...Dad? Is there something you should tell me?"

Etta nodded. "You knew me as Etta Blake, and that's the name my aunt raised me under. But I was born Henrietta Bishop."

Peter smirked. "Ella, Eddie and Etta. I still get a kick out of that."

Simon grinned and pointed at her.

"That explains your obsession with the original Fringe team. And here I thought you were just tilting at windmills. I do wish you'd told me earlier."

"Well, I'd had it drilled into me since I was four not to tell anyone who I was. I was afraid if I told you, it'd get you killed. But no more secrets."

"Well, I still have a few," Peter said, "Come on, curfew in an hour."

He led them to a house that was old, abandoned, dilapidated; two stories and an attic on the edge of the university campus. It looked more like a set from an old horror movie than a livable dwelling. Curiously, Bishop produced a key from his pocket, unlocked the front door, and walked in like he owned the place.

"You lived here, Dad?" Etta asked Peter.

Peter peered around with a sad expression on his face, then started to pull tarps off of furniture.

"Yeah, with Walter for a few years. You were never here. By the time you were born, we'd bought the place in Brookline"

"I remember the house in Brookline. We had a flower garden out back that I loved to play in."

"If you don't mind my asking, what's the plan?" Simon asked, as he moved to help pull sheets off furniture.

"Simple." Bishop pulled a tarp off a leather couch, sprawled onto it.

"We spend the night here - no sense taking chances. In the morning we head out to Reiden Lake to retrieve something we left there twenty years ago."

Simon found an old armchair and flopped down into it, kicking up a cloud of dust.

"What are we retrieving?" he asked.

Peter winced, his eyes flicking upward, recalling.

"Towards the end, we were getting desperate. Higher ups in the government had started collaborating with the Observers. It was only a matter of time before they turned on us. We sent Etta away with Olivia's sister, Rachel, thinking that even if we didn't make it...she'd at least have a chance."

Peter paused and looked at his daughter fondly, before continuing.

"Walter had discovered a way to manufacture anti-matter, relatively cheaply..."

Simon raised an eyebrow. He'd never heard the words anti-matter and cheap in the same sentence before. Making the stuff required a particle accelerator and huge amounts of energy, and the amount created was only a fraction of a gram per year.

"How much anti-matter?" he asked.

"Almost seven grams, at the end." Peter said with a grin.

Simon felt his heart skip a beat. "Holy fuck!" he exclaimed.

Etta looked up from where she was sorting through a pile of supplies. "Is that a lot?" she asked.

"Etta...that's basically twenty times the Hiroshima nuke..." Simon whistled.

Peter nodded. "Yeah. Well, there are inefficiencies, so the yield wouldn't be quite as much as the math says. But, as you can imagine, it was too dangerous to store all that in one place, let alone in a populated area. So we divided the anti-matter into seven bombs and hid them."

Peter scratched his chin.

"Well, we call them bombs, but really they're just storage devices I designed, powered by the anti-matter itself. Etta told me that Walter detonated the stuff we had left over, the bomb at Massive Dynamic. That one had maybe a tenth of a gram."

"So there are six more hidden out there?" Simon asked.

Peter nodded. "Yeah. Walter says he needs them to power the device he's making."

 

Peter felt an elbow poke him in the ribs, just hard enough to gently nudge him awake.

"Hmmm?" he moaned softly, only half awake.

"Peter..." Olivia whispered in an exaggerated, singsong tone.

Peter opened his eyes and gazed at her, letting her see the question in his drowsy eyes.

"Pickles and strawberry ice cream," she answered.

Peter laughed. Olivia was eight months pregnant, and he could only conclude that their unborn daughter liked things sour and sweet. At least it wasn't sauerkraut and chocolate sauce this time.

"Okay, I'll be right back." he replied. He pressed a quick kiss to his wife's belly.

Peter got up, threw a robe on over his tee shirt and boxer shorts, and then padded downstairs. He nodded absently to Walter, who apparently was using a hamster on a wheel to power a Ham radio.

He hummed to himself as he put a large scoop of ice cream in a bowl, then shuddered with disgust as he added two pickles from a jar in the refrigerator.

"Peter, where are you?" Olivia asked.

Peter looked up. Olivia was standing in the kitchen, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, her long hair tied back in a pony tail.

"Uh, where's your baby bump?" he asked, dumbfounded, then, "...Oh, I'm dreaming. You'd think being in the wrong house would've tipped me off."

Olivia walked over and touched his cheek. "Peter, where are you?" she repeated.

 

Peter came awake with a startled gasp and peered around the darkness of the house.

"Dad?" Etta whispered, from her sleeping bag on the floor. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah... I was just... dreaming," Peter sighed.

"You said mom's name." Etta rolled onto her side so she could see him better.

"Yeah..." Peter said, then raised his eyebrows. "Uh, what else did you hear?"

"Something about pickles and ice cream." Etta smiled.

Peter laughed. "Well, it's almost dawn, we should eat and get on the road."

Etta woke Simon, and they shared a breakfast of fake soy-eggs and coffee chews.

"Seriously, the chew coffee stuff is the worst thing the Observers have done. They should be wiped out just for that." Bishop complained.

After breakfast, they shouldered the knapsacks piled in the foyer of the old house and started the walk to the nearest monorail station. Halfway there, Simon suddenly stopped. "What in the world?"

At the security checkpoint at the entrance to an office building, a young woman had cast off her long coat, revealing a pink tutu. She started prancing about and pirouetted around the scanning machines, to the great annoyance of the security guards.

Etta followed his gaze and snickered. "Interpretive dance as non-violent protest. That was in last week's archive. Dad has a warped sense of humor."

They took a monorail to the outskirts of Boston, then Peter led them on an hour's hike into the country, following overgrown paths that Simon could barely even detect; finally he led them to a clearing within sight of the river.

Peter pulled a tarp off an old gasoline vehicle that had been artfully concealed in a stand of trees. It appeared to be a rusted out piece of junk, the word JEEP proudly flaking away on the grille. A pile of camping equipment was in the back.

"I spent two weeks fixing this old thing up," Bishop announced. "If she doesn't work, I'm gonna have to turn in my mechanical genius card."

Of course, the jeep fired up on the first turn of the key. They piled in, Simon taking the back seat and Etta taking the passenger side. Bishop put the Jeep in gear and they were off.

Mother Nature had reasserted herself with a vengeance in the rural areas of upstate New York since the Observers had taken over. Roads outside of cities were no longer maintained and had mostly overgrown, leaving only the barest clearing and the occasional decaying road sign to tell them they were going in the right direction.

Animal life was also common, requiring Peter to drive much slower than he would have preferred. The deer in particular weren't used to having vehicles on the roads, and he had to swerve several times to avoid them.

They rode past the occasional small farm, but it became evident that the countryside had been largely depopulated after power was cut off for areas outside the city. The inhabitants had faced a winter without heat or power, and most of them had made a rational decision to move toward more civilized areas.

Peter wondered out loud how many had died in the cold. Simon and Etta were silent.

Six hours later, the three of them stood behind a small cabin, one hundred feet from the clear water of Reiden Lake. They clustered around a hole in the ground, approximately two feet wide by four feet deep, that had obviously been recently dug – in the last few weeks, certainly.

"Well, this is disappointing." Peter said dryly.

"Are you sure this is where you buried it?" Simon asked.

"Of course I'm sure!" Peter snapped. "I only buried it eight months ago, from my point of view!"

"Well, I think it's more than disappointing," Simon replied. "I think it's alarming that someone other than us has an anti-matter bomb!"

"Dad... who knew where you buried the bombs?" Etta asked.

Peter looked at her, an odd expression on his face. "Olivia. We buried them together."

"What about Broyles?" asked Simon.

Peter shook his head. "No. He knew we had them, of course, but he didn't know where we hid them. And we didn't write the locations down anywhere, either."

Peter stared at the lake for a moment, then shrugged in resignation.

"I have to think about it. There's nothing we can do about it tonight. Let's start a campfire and make s'mores," he said.

 

Skin pressed against her bare skin, loving the feel of Olivia's long, slender legs around his waist, Peter brushed her soft golden hair aside and pressed his lips to that spot behind her ear. Her chuckles turned to a low, throaty moan. She wrapped her arms around him, caressing his back, and squirmed like a cat having its neck scratched.

"Peter..." she breathed in his ear. Then she chuckled again. She hooked one leg behind his, pushed off with the other, and then she was astride his hips, a triumphant smirk on her beautiful face.

"That's better!" she said. "Now I have you where I want you!"

Olivia grasped his wrists, used her weight to pin him, and started rolling her hips, watching his face attentively in the moonlight streaming in through the window. She kept the pace agonizingly slow, building him up to the edge, only to slow down and pull him back.

Abruptly, she released his wrists and settled back, taking him deep inside her, but slowing the pace so much that he regained his higher brain functions. She gazed down at him, a tender expression on her face, fingers tracing terms of endearment on his bare chest.

"I want another baby." she said, watching his face.

Peter chuckled. "Kind of unfair, don't you think, bringing this up right now?"

Olivia bit her lower lip and clenched him playfully, making him wince and gasp.

"You know I wouldn't mention it, like this, if I thought you'd really object," she said, her tone serious.

Peter nodded. "Ok, honey."

"So I can go off birth control?" she asked, smiling, and rewarded him with a lazy roll of her hips.

Peter gasped, barely managing a nod.

Suddenly, a chill wind blew through the open window. Olivia stopped her amorous movements, and looked around, a puzzled expression on her face.

"Olivia? What's wrong?" Peter asked.

Olivia continued looking around, then said, "I'm dreaming..."

Peter chuckled. This was getting out of hand. "No... I"m pretty sure this is..."

Olivia looked down at him, an expression on her face he'd seen once before, when she'd awakened from a coma desperate to tell him something she couldn't remember.

"Honey?" Peter asked, and he sat up, wrapping his arms around her waist and crossing his legs. Olivia instinctively stretched her legs out behind him and caressed his face.

"Where are you?" she whispered, "I went back to the lab; you weren't in the amber anymore. Who took you from me?"


	6. Chapter 6

Astrid Farnsworth heard the floorboards of the old house creak, felt the vibration through her feet.

"Walter! You don't get any cookies before lunch," she yelled, without looking up from the flowers she was painting.

She turned, looking into the kitchen. Walter was standing in the middle of the room, a gobsmacked expression on his face, as if the thought never would've crossed his mind.

"I wasn't looking for a cookie..." he said.

"Walter...you're holding one in your hand," Astrid said with a frown.

Startled, the scientist looked at the oatmeal cookie in this hand, and then back at her. "Well, that's not what I came up here for. I was going to New York."

"The trip to New York can wait until Peter and Etta get back with the bombs. It will just be a few days." Astrid said.

Walter looked incensed. "It's inefficient not to have all the pieces of the device ready to assemble when they return. I am going to New York to retrieve the control matrix from Bell's lab."

Walter shouldered the pack he was carrying and walked out of the house, making a point of slamming the door for emphasis.

"Walter..." Astrid growled. She tossed her paintbrush down in frustration, and looked at the painting sadly. She really wanted to finish it today.

Since having missing parts of his brain restored six months prior, Walter had been much less insane, but nearly insufferable, with his arrogance and impatience on full display.

For the most part, Peter bore the brunt of Walter's tantrums. The younger Bishop demonstrated the patience of a saint, restricting their conversations to the only topics that wouldn't trigger outbursts of animosity - the device taking shape in the basement of the house, his granddaughter, and food.

As for Astrid, Walter mostly treated her like a personal chef and butler. Etta was the only one who had a decent relationship with him, and even she could only stand him in small doses. She complained that he still behaved as if she was still his four-year-old granddaughter.

Sometimes, Astrid fantasized about scooping chunks of Walter's brain out again with a melon baller, turning him back into the insane but sweet scientist he once had been. But if she had learned anything in her years in Fringe division, it was that actions taken with the best of intentions could have terrible unforeseen consequences.

She opened a corner drawer in the kitchen, reached in and retrieved a handgun taped to the underside of the counter, and tucked it into the waistband of her pants. She took the time to write a carefully worded message for Peter and Etta on the small whiteboard attached to the wall for that purpose, then she was out the door, running after Walter.

An hour later, they were on a monorail to New York. She'd had a few anxious moments at entrance to the station, as it was the first test of Peter's hacked banking implants. But they'd scanned without a hitch, which meant they had virtually unlimited funds now.

If only she could convince Walter to just go on a shopping spree with her.

"You didn't have to come with." Walter grumbled, "...I'm not crazy anymore."

At Astrid's glare, he averted his eyes and corrected himself.

"Well, not as crazy. And I'm not even on any drugs."

Astrid stared at him.

"Well..." Walter corrected again. "Maybe a little marijuana."

Astrid sighed.

"If something happens to you, Walter, we're done. And Peter would never forgive me."

Walter muttered quietly, "He would."

Astrid looked at him. "Yes, he probably would. He's a good man. You should treat him better."

Walter fell into a sullen silence.

Astrid looked at him, but before she could reply a robotic voice informed the few passengers in the compartment that they were pulling into the station. Ten minutes later, they were out on the streets of New York.

"Come on, we have a long walk," Walter said, and walked off. Astrid hurried to catch up.

Astrid had expected a sea of faces, but she found a lot had changed in twenty years. The broad boulevards were largely empty of either people or vehicles. No murmur of conversation, no click of shoes on pavement, no honking of horns. It was eerie.

"Walter...what happened? Where are all the people?" she whispered.

The scientist looked around, as if seeing his surroundings for the first time.

"I suppose the Purge went on, after we were ambered. We were hardly the only group opposing them. They would have wiped out all the opposition they could find. And after, they only needed enough people to run things smoothly."

"Etta said that they sterilize women after they have two children," Astrid said. "...Could that have produced this...depopulation in twenty years?"

Walter shook his head. "No. That would only produce a small, gradual decline in population, as people died off naturally. Over decades."

Walter was frowning, and shaking his head, as if he were thinking about the mystery of the missing population, and not liking the conclusions he was reaching.

Astrid spotted a pale, bald man in a suit ahead of them, heading in their direction. She tugged on Walter's sleeve to get his attention. When he squinted his eyes and nodded, they crossed to the other side of the street to avoid the approaching Observer.

"What happens if one of us gets read?" she asked.

"Well, my dear. That's what you have a firearm for, Walter said. "Although it would not be ideal to use it on the street in broad daylight, if an Observer were to get a good read on one of us, more than surface thoughts, the jig would be up, for all of us. Thank God neither of us knows where the bombs are hid, although knowing of their existence is almost as bad."

Peter had constructed the handgun under her jacket, based on designs from William Bell. It fired a small caliber, hypervelocity bullet, supposedly fast enough that an Observer couldn't dodge it. Of course, the design had never been tested in the field, so the actual effectiveness of the weapon was unknown.

"We should just avoid any Observers we see," Astrid said. "There can't be that many of them, even in New York."

Over the next hour, Walter led them on a meandering path through the nearly empty streets, avoiding any encounter with the authorities. Finally, they found themselves at a closed commercial storage facility.

"Big Bill's Self Storage" proclaimed a crooked sign over the entrance.

"I never pictured Bell as living out of a storage container," Astrid said.

They found a gap in the chain link fencing and she squeezed through, then held the fence wide for Walter.

"Well, he owned the facility, actually. The unit we're concerned with is...this way."

Walter led her between rows of storage units, muttering to himself. From what Astrid could gather, he appeared to solving an equation. Eventually, he stopped before a particular unit.

"Ah, here it is, Astrid. Now for the combination..."

Walter stooped down and inspected the numeric keypad set into the next to the entrance. There was nothing to distinguish this unit from any other, and she said so.

"Don't be stupid, girl," Walter snarled. "That's the point - we didn't want anybody to find it. So the number of the unit was the equation I just solved, and the combination will be the answer to the next equation."

Ten minutes later, Walter tapped in the answer to the second equation he'd solved he'd solved in his head, and the door opened with a loud metallic click. Astrid grabbed his shoulder before he could he walk into the unit.

"Let me go in first, Walter," she insisted. "This is Bell we're talking about." Walter started to say something sarcastic, but then held his tongue and nodded. "Yes, better you than me."

Astrid glared at him, drew her pistol, and stepped the unit. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and soon after, she found the light switch. When the compartment was filled with bright white fluorescent light, she called over her shoulder.

"Walter, it's safe! And, basically empty."

And it was, save for twenty years accumulation of dust, and a wooden table that stood in the middle of the compartment. On the table was a heavy iron safe, with some sort of biometric interface.

Walter stepped forward, unshouldered his pack, and fished though through it. He placed a metal rod on the table – one of the de-ambering devices. Then he produced an object sealed in the yellow, translucent substance – William Bell's severed hand.

"Ewww," muttered Astrid, as she turned and closed the door to the storage unit. The more privacy they had for this, the better, she figured.

She watched as Walter attached electrodes from the device to the block of amber, and pushed a button on the wand. With an electrical snapping noise, the amber encasing the hand evaporated.

Astrid almost lost her lunch when the now liberated hand spasmed once, as if it had just been severed from its owner.

Walter frowned at her, then pushed a white button on the safe, seized the hand, and pressed it against the black screen on the door of the safe. There was a humming noise as the safe scanned the hand, then the container noisily unlocked itself.

Walter seized the handle and opened the safe, revealing a manila envelope inside. Scowling, he seized the envelope, before Astrid could caution him. He tore it open and removed a sheet of expensive typing paper.

Walter read the note once, sighed, then read it out loud for her benefit, unconsciously adopting the speech inflections of his longtime lab partner.

_Dear Walter, My old friend, since you are reading this letter, I can only conclude that I am deceased. I've grown rather attached to the second lease on life you gave to me, and moving the part of the device I constructed to a safer location seemed to be a prudent life insurance policy. I suggest you find some method of breathing new life into my old bones, so that I can tell you where I actually hid it. I'll see you soon, I'm sure. Sincerely, William Bell_

Walter crumpled up the sheet of typing paper and threw it into a corner of the unit, then put the de-ambering wand and Bell's twitching hand back into his pack.

"You don't seem surprised, Walter," Astrid said.

"I'm not. I expected...something. But I was really anticipating a bomb, or something nasty like that. But we've outsmarted him, however unknowingly. All we have to do is remove him from the amber."

Astrid shook her head. "I don't think Peter will like that very much. He hates Bell with a passion."

"Well, he's not here to object, is he?" Walter snapped, "I have no fondness for Belly anymore. Lord knows, I've made mistakes and I've been arrogant, but William...caused so much harm, especially to my loved ones. It was his, you see."

Astrid raised an eyebrow. "What was his, Walter?"

"The Machine! The infernal device that gave the Observers the opportunity to erase my son from time. Bell designed it. Whether he was working for the Observers I don't know..."

Astrid shook her head. "Walter, I don't think..."

Walter shouldered the pack once again. "Come on, we have to make it back to Boston before curfew."

They were the only passengers on the monorail back to Boston. The silence was worse than being packed in like sardines with strangers, because it brought to mind the mystery of the missing people. Naturally, they started talking, if only to banish the silence.

"You're right, you know," Walter blurted out, as he lay sprawled across several seats, hands folded on his chest.

"What was I right about, Walter?" Astrid was repetitively pacing the length of the car they were, trying to empty her mind and just be for a little while.

"I should treat Peter better."

Walter kept on staring at the ceiling. Astrid finished her stroll to the forward end of the car and came back, finally sitting down across the aisle.

"Why don't you?" she asked. "Your attitude towards everyone changed, Walter, not just Peter."

Walter nodded. "He deserves better. You all deserve better. I know that, and that's certainly what I'm working toward."

Walter finally sat up, and looked her in the eye.

"For years, I thought I was being punished, for my arrogance, for my hubris. I took steps. I had Bell remove some parts of my brain that had knowledge I thought I shouldn't have. Now, those parts, and that knowledge, have been restored to me."

"Every day, I wake up and I wonder...with those bits of brain back, with those bits of me back, am I that man again? The one that kidnapped and drowned a little boy, broke two universes and killed untold thousands. I wonder...and here I am, working on another weapon of mass destruction. It would have been better if Etta had left me in the amber."

"I'm keeping my distance from Peter especially, and the rest of you, because I don't know what I might do if I lost any of you. I don't want to repeat the mistakes of my past."

The remainder of the ride back to Boston was spent in silence. They disembarked with an hour to spare before curfew, and Walter insisted on going to the Harvard lab. They reached it a scant half hour before curfew, and would have to spend the night there or risk being caught by the security patrols.

Walter scurried about the lab, blowing dust off containers and collecting various objects off of shelves and tables.

"What are you doing?" Astrid asked, watching him warily.

Walter glared at her. "I'm gathering what I need to chemically cauterize Bell's arm. It would make little sense to remove him from the amber, only to have him bleed to death."

He crouched in front of Bell, put a metal basin down on the floor and proceeded to pour a noxious mix of chemicals into it. As he did so, he explained the procedure.

"...When I dissolve the amber, you will catch him. Then I will plunge his arm into the chemical bath. I will have to hold it submerged in the compound for about thirty seconds, and it will be rather painful, so you'll have to restrain him for me."

William Bell fell like a ragdoll into Astrid's arms when the amber dissolved, and she supported him on the way down to the floor. She wrapped her arms and legs around his torso and used her body weight to hold him still, as he thrashed and moaned after Walter plunged the stump of his left arm into the chemical bath. She held him as she shuddered and gasped for another minute as the wound crusted over and the lab filled with the sickening miasma of burning flesh.

Finally, Bell took a deep breath, and leered at her.

"Well, dear, was it good for you, too?" the old man rasped, with a waggle of his eyebrows.

Astrid frowned and shivered.

"Pervert," she muttered, as she released him and stood.

She gasped in surprise when Walter, his face contorted with rage, seized the nearest available weapon, slapping Bell in the face with his own severed hand.

When they returned to the house the next morning, Peter took Bell's reanimation as well as Astrid thought he would. He came bounding down the stairs, obviously glad to see his father home safe – but then his face twisted when he saw Bell.

"Sonuvabitch..." he snarled.

Peter pulled open a drawer and snatched a pistol from inside, spun and leveled the sights on the sneering face of William Bell, but Etta and Simon restrained him.

"Dad...calm down...please..." Etta said, holding his forearms down, keeping the pistol pointed at the floor, while Simon wrapped his arms around Peter from behind.

"Calm down, mate!" Simon said.

"He's betrayed all of us, several times, and you brought him here!" Peter said to Walter, still struggling.

"He can take us to the trigger, Peter." Walter said, "I'm sorry, but we need him."

"We don't have the anti-matter!" Peter yelled.

"We don't?" Walter gasped, "What the devil happened?"

Peter gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and stopped struggling. He hit the magazine release on the pistol, dropping the clip to the floor, then racked the slide, ejecting the loaded shell.

"Take it!" he said, shoving the pistol at Etta. When she took the pistol and Simon released his arms, he walked out the front door without another word.

"Dad!" Etta passed the empty handgun to Simon and chased after her father.

The remaining quartet of Astrid, Walter, Bell, and Simon stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Finally, Simon sighed.

"Two days back, and it's all going swimmingly, isn't it?" he said.


	7. Chapter 7

Fringe Division had the hustle and bustle, the background murmur of any big city police department these days - until The Boss walked in. Then all conversation would cease. What chafed Phillip Broyles, and had for the past twenty years, was the fact that he wasn't The Boss anymore.

Broyles looked up and frowned as his Observer overseer, Captain Windmark, glided through a cloud of silence into his office, unannounced, the over-the-top 1940's style trenchcoat flowing around him like diaphanous wings.

"Phillip..." the tall, pallid man said, removing his fedora. "Your final report on the incident at the former headquarters of Massive Dynamic was disturbingly thin. And late."

Broyles raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair.

"That's because there wasn't much left to investigate. What wasn't disintegrated is radioactive now. Anti-matter bombs tend to do that, even tiny ones," he said dryly.

Windmark peered at him, curious at Broyles more-defiant-than-usual attitude. "Was the incident connected to the one at Harvard?"

Broyles shook his head. "There's no evidence of that. Someone had been there, but they were interrupted before they could finish whatever it was they were doing."

"The common denominator of the two incidents is the original Fringe team." Windmark said. "Coupled with the other incidents of lawlessness, it is a disturbing pattern."

Broyles smirked. "Incidents of lawlessness? A few Natives having some fun at the expense of Observers isn't against the law."

Windmark stared at Broyles for a moment, then placed a bronze colored object on his desk and tapped the top. A three dimensional image of the Observer named September appeared above the desk.

"Dale a tu cuerpo  
Alegria Macarena  
Que tu cuerpo es pa darle  
Alegria y cosa buena  
Dale a tu cuerpo  
Alegria Macarena  
Eh, Macarena!"

The Observer's visage recited, tonelessly and without rhythm.

Broyles smirked. "As amusing as this is, I don't see what this has to do with Fringe Division. September is your problem, per our agreements."

Windmark stared again. "These are being distributed among the Natives. If you come across any, confiscate them and bring them to me immediately."

Broyles bent over, unlocked the bottom right drawer of his desk, revealing a rosewood cigar box, which he placed on his desk. Windmark leaned over for a better view, as Broyles opened the box, revealing a dozen expensive Cuban cigars – a gift from a past President of the United States.

Broyles wordlessly produced a clipper and antique Zippo lighter from another drawer, placing them on the desk with the box.

"Tobacco is banned... " Windmark said, puzzled, as Broyles removed a cigar from the box, sniffed it, then clipped one end and lit up.

Broyles leaned back in his chair, put his legs up on his desk, and puffed away at his cigar, clearly enjoying himself. He puffed a cloud of grey smoke in Windmark's face, making the Observer wrinkle his nose in disgust.

"You received bad news from your doctor." Windmark surmised, "I am sorry, Phillip."

Broyles removed the cigar from his mouth and stared up at Windmark. "Six months. Give or take a month," he answered the unasked question.

Windmark stared him with an expression approaching pity. "I was not untruthful when I said I enjoy our relationship, Phillip. This is... disturbing to me. There are... procedures among my people. Not generally available to Natives, but I could pull some strings, as you people say."

Broyles puffed on his cigar for a full minute before replying. "Ask me again in three months."

Windmark tipped his hat and left. The squad room started buzzing again once he was out of earshot.

Olivia looked up from the reports she was studying, was surprised to see Sam walking into the room, with his hands held high, followed by a large man with a gun to his head.

Olivia looked up from the reports she was studying. She was surprised to see Sam walking into the room, hands held high, followed by a large man with a gun to his head.

"Sorry." Sam said, "... he got the drop on me."

Olivia smiled reassuringly, her whole attitude exuding confidence.

"It's okay. I expected something like this to happen soon," she replied.

"Vance... " Olivia said, addressing the burly man with the gun, "I take it you want your Resistance cell back."

"You've had six months, Olivia," Vance sneered, "...You still haven't used the bombs!"

"I've been gathering intelligence, Vance. We have six of the most powerful weapons on the planet, but no way to make more. We have to figure out where to use them to get the most effect against the Observers. Unlike you, I'm not concerned with revenge against the Loyalists."

"The Loyalist bastards killed my... " Vance exclaimed, then, "What the hell?"

Olivia stared intently at the pistol in Vance's hand, and the safety clicked on, pushed by an invisible finger. Then the magazine release was pushed, dropping the clip to the floor with a loud clatter. Finally, the slide racked, sending the loaded shell to the floor with a metallic clatter and rendering the weapon harmless.

Olivia returned to her reports. "Get out. Before you piss me off."

Terror evident in his eyes, Vance fled the room.

Sam smiled. "Thanks. You should do Vegas."

Olivia rolled her eyes.

Sam pulled up a chair and sat down across the table from her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked.

Olivia adjusted the pair of cheap reading glasses on her nose, peered at a map on the table before her. "Talk about what, Sam?"

"It's okay to get emotional about what happened yesterday. And it's okay to talk about it," Sam said, his words soft.

Olivia stiffened as she recalled the moment of absolute, soul-destroying panic she'd had when she and Sam had entered the Harvard lab and discovered that someone had removed Walter, Peter, and Astrid from the amber before they could do it themselves.

Surprisingly, William Bell had been left behind, which suggested good taste on the part of the abductors. But it didn't make her feel any better.

Olivia had spent a full five minutes sobbing like a little girl in Sam's arm's, to his surprise and her unending embarrassment.

She shook her head. "Not now. I had my cry. That's enough for now."

Sam leaned back in the chair, and put his feet up on the table.

"Did you have any luck last night?" Sam asked, referring to her attempts to communicate with Peter through their shared dreamscape.

"I don't think so." Olivia sighed, "I think we both have to realize we're dreaming in order to communicate anything meaningful. I don't think Peter did, last night. We've just been out of sync."

She started to say something, then looked away.

"What?" Sam asked.

Olivia shrugged. "The truth is, without Peter and Walter, I don't have a plan. We need to find them."

The three resident super-geniuses in the Bishop household - Walter, Peter, and William Bell - quickly fell into a pattern of bickering about how to power the device without anti-matter. Walter or Bell would make a suggestion, the two of them would discuss the ramifications eagerly, and Peter would shoot it down with an assertion of impracticality.

All of them were gathered around the breakfast table the first time it happened.

"Amphilicite!" blurted Walter, spraying scrambled soy-eggs on Astrid's plate, earning himself an annoyed frown.

"Yes!" exclaimed Bell. "We'll have to process it into a battery..."

"...and build an ultracapacitor, release all the energy at once… " continued Walter.

Meanwhile, Peter borrowed Etta's napkin and Simon's pen, and did the math while the two visionary mad scientists went off on a tangent about what substances to use for the capacitor. Then Peter raised his hand for attention.

"Gentlemen," he said, "...according to my calculations, it would take seventeen metric tons of processed Amphilicite to equal the energy yield of six grams of anti-matter. I think that's more than exists in the United States!"

Everyone at the table stared in silence at everybody else. Peter dropped the scrawled-upon napkin in front of Bell.

"Check my math!" he dared.

And so it went for three more increasingly bizarre suggestions. By the end of the day, the Mensa trio had stopped talking to each other out of frustration and annoyance, sequestering themselves in different parts of the house. Peter was tinkering in the attic, Walter in the basement, Bell in the garage.

Etta shook her head. "I don't know how Mom worked with you three!"

Bell sneered at her, stole a Red Vine from Walter, then slunk off to work on the prosthetic hand he was making for himself.

"Olivia was very patient, my dear." Walter told her. "...and it's certainly a quality you inherited from her in full measure."

Phillip Broyles, strode through the restaurant towards Nina Sharp sitting in her wheelchair at a table in the back, all the while nodding at various patrons he recognized.

The weekly lunch date with Nina Sharp had been a tradition for over two decades. The restaurant had varied in the early days, until Olivia had suggested Damiano's. The two of them had kept up the tradition ever since.

Phillip had been thinking a lot about the people who had preceded him into the Great Hereafter over his years of public service. Somehow, he'd outlived scores of military, law enforcement, and security personnel, all of them good people. The thought of joining them soon did not frighten him, but he desperately wanted to do so on his own terms.

Broyles held his side and bent down to kiss Nina's cheek. Then he handed her a partially eaten Red Vine.

"Phillip, how romantic... " she said, warily eying the piece of licorice.

Broyles took a seat at the table next to her and gestured for a waitress.

"Have you had any contact with them?" he asked, opting for directness.

Nina avoided his gaze. "Who?"

"Don't play dumb. Etta Blake and Simon Foster went missing, in concert with the bomb at the old Massive Dynamic building, and the activity at the Harvard lab. I picked that up at the lab."

Nina swallowed. "Do they know?"

Broyles took a sip of his drink before replying. "No. I... edited the report."

He leaned closer and lowered his voice.

"I want in, Nina. I've got six months left to live and I don't want to spend it being their lap dog anymore. I want to go out with my head held high. If you need information, just ask. If you need something planted, just ask. If you need more... "

Nina nodded. "I'll have to talk to Etta, I'll let you know what they need."

Etta followed her father downstairs and into Walter's basement lab. Together, they waited a few minutes for him to acknowledge their presence, but no acknowledgment was forthcoming.

"Walter, I think Olivia and I have been having the same dreams," Peter finally blurted out.

Startled, Walter spun around and looked up at his son, a forgotten Red Vine hanging from his mouth. His brow was creased, a signal that he was thinking intently.

"When did the dreams start?" Walter asked.

"Shortly after Etta and Simon removed us from the amber," Peter replied, "...in fact, that very night, I believe."

"Hmm. You two have shared mental states before," Walter mused out loud. "And Olivia certainly has a large measure of psychic abilities from the Cortexiphan treatments. It's just marginally possible. I take it you want to try to communicate with her? "

Peter nodded, and Etta's eyebrows shot up in surprise at her grandfather's words.

Walter's brow creased again. "That...would be more difficult. You would both have to be in a lucid dream state in order pass along a conscious message."

"Wait, what?" Etta interrupted, "Mom is psychic? As in... really psychic?"

Peter and Walter both looked at her with pained expressions on their faces. Then Walter looked at his son.

"You haven't discussed this with her?" he asked, his tone neutral.

"It… never came up." Peter said. ".. I was kind of hoping it never would, honestly."

Walter shook his head. "Peter-"

"I'll tell her." Peter interrupted, his tone grim.

"All right then. I'll go over there and work on the problem of getting you to dream properly."

Walter wandered over to another workbench, muttering something about Beta-1 waves and white noise generators. Peter turned to Etta.

"Princess, it's a long, long story. Your mother was given an experimental drug, when she was a little girl. It produced certain... wild talents. At first they were pretty random, and hard for her to control, but she got a lot better as time went on."

Peter paused and sighed before continuing.

"After you were born, we tested your blood, and you had small amounts of the drug in your system. It'd been passed to you from Olivia, while you were in her womb. We kept a close eye on you – well, before we had to send you away, that is, but you never showed any of your mother's abilities. At least as far we could tell."

Etta digested that for a moment before asking, "What kind of abilities?"

Peter scratched his scruffy chin.

"Uh. She could see into the other universe occasionally, and detect objects from the other side. She could cross over unaided, but it was a strain. Psychokinesis."

Etta's eyes widened at the growing list of abilities her mother had demonstrated. When Peter finished, she nodded.

"That... explains a lot, actually." she said.

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Explains what?"

Etta was silent for a moment. She'd never told anyone about her ability, for fear the Observers would find out and hunt her. Finally she sighed. If she couldn't trust Peter, then who could she trust?

"When I was a teenager, I found out that the Observers couldn't read me. Or rather they could read me, but they would only see what I wanted them to. Like I can project my thoughts into their brain, or something."

When she looked up, she was surprised at the frightened expression on Peter's face.

"Dad? What's wrong?" she asked.

"Uh, has it been getting easier to do as you've gotten older?" Peter asked.

Etta nodded.

"Okay..." Peter took his daughters hand, and led her over to where Walter was brainstorming.

"Ah! Peter!" Walter said happily, "...I have the beginnings of a solution. It involves LSD!"

"Doesn't it always?" Peter said drily, "Walter, we need to test Etta's blood for Cortexiphan."

Simon Foster and Etta Bishop sat on a bench in the park and fed pigeons while they waited for Nina to come by for their regularly scheduled chance meeting.

"They say madness runs in families, you know," Simon said.

If they weren't so close, that might have offended her, but she just smirked and raised a taunting eyebrow at him.

"Are you talking about me, or my Dad?" she asked.

"Well, I already know you're crazy. But what do you think about Peter's talk of communicating with your mother in his dreams? It sounds more like Walter..."

Etta nudged him playfully with an elbow.

"I'm just saying... I think Peter needs to prepare himself for disappointment..."

Etta nodded and then shrugged. "I already tried to have that conversation with him. I think... he has a lot of himself invested in my mother. She's his hero."

"Not just your mother. He worships the ground you walk on."

Etta glanced at Simon, but kept on feeding the pigeons. What could she say to that?

Simon changed the subject. "Did I tell you Peter had The Talk with me the other night?"

"The Talk?"

"Yeah, The Talk. He told me he knows six ways to kill a person without leaving a body, and only one of them requires anti-matter."

Etta laughed. She dumped the last of her bread crumbs over the flock of pigeons, then crumpled up her paper sack and tossed it into a nearby waste bin.

Simon smiled and looked past her. "Oh my, look what the cat dragged in."

Nina Sharp rolled her motorized wheelchair up to the bench and stopped.

"Well, it's a fine afternoon for a stroll in the park, isn't it?" she said.

"Hello Nina," Etta greeted her. Etta and Simon stood and walked on either side of Nina as they talked.

Out of habit, the three of them made small talk, until they were certain no one was following them. Finally, Nina started the business portion of the meeting.

"I have some important news," Nina said. "Phillip Broyles came to see me."

"You have a standing lunch date with him, Nina," Etta said.

"Yes, but now, and I quote, 'he wants in', unquote. He's made an offer to do whatever we need. Information, planting something, whatever we want."

Etta and Simon looked at each other.

"I think we can trust him." Nina said, answering the unspoken question. "He was certainly trusted before. Even by your parents and grandfather."

"We can't really make this decision by ourselves." Simon said.

"I understand that." Nina said, "But talk to Peter and Walter, let them know that we have someone on the inside now, as high up as we could reasonably hope for."

Peter sighed and shook his head at the test tube of orange liquid in his hand. The vial contained a mixture of Etta's blood and the reagent used to test for Cortexiphan. When he'd shaken it, the substance had turned bright orange, almost fluorescent, indicating high levels of Cortexiphan.

"Walter, how can Etta have more Cortexiphan in her blood now than what she had as a child?" he asked bitterly. He put the test tube back in the stand, then lowered his head into his hands.

Walter looked apologetic. "I don't know, Peter. There's so much I don't understand about Cortexiphan. I'm starting to think that some organ in the body – perhaps one of the endocrine glands – begins to synthesize it after childhood exposure. Either that, or Henrietta has been dosed."

Peter looked up, and the two of them stared at each other, communicating silently in a way they hadn't done for years. The spell was broken when they heard steps coming down the stairs.

Presently, Astrid and Etta entered the lab.

"Hi. Simon is keeping an eye on Bell." Etta said.

"Just like old times, huh Peter?" Astrid said brightly.

Peter rolled his eyes. "Yay, LSD. My favorite thing in the world."

Peter sat on the inflatable mattress that lay on the floor in the center of the lab. Etta tied a thick towel around his head for a makeshift blindfold, then put a pair of headphones on him that were attached to an improvised white noise generator. She kissed his cheek, getting a smile in response, and helped him to lie down on the mattress.

"LSD.," Walter said, handing a laced sugar cube to Astrid. Then he took a syringe from a nearby tray, "...and a sedative."

Walter injected his son in the arm and nodded to Astrid, who held the sugar cube against Peter's lips, which he accepted and let dissolve in his mouth. Then he grew still.

"How long before he starts dreaming?" Etta asked, eyes on her father.

"Not long. He should be both fully conscious and dreaming, which is why we've limited his sensory input. It would be rather confusing for him otherwise."

Peter stood on the shore of Reiden Lake, with a full moon hanging overhead and a chill wind blowing across the water.

"Me and my obsessed brain." he muttered, "Why do I keep coming back here?"

A Machine Elf detached itself from a nearby tree and approached. It was composed of scintillating cubes and pyramids, and constantly disassembled and reassembled itself as it moved.

"You keep returning here because it's where it all started. All things must be reunited with their origin." The Machine Elf said, its voice like its body, all angles and light, "Birth, death and rebirth, creation and annihilation, they're all the same for you."

Peter looked at the small thing, bemused. "Are you my spirit guide, or something?"

The Machine Elf rotated on its axis, defied physics and turned itself inside out before replying. "I am that part of you that exists in all times and places, and always has."

Peter cocked an eyebrow. "You're saying you're my soul?"

He shook his head, disappointed.

"This is too metaphysical," he said. "...just take me to Olivia."

The Machine Elf pulsed, assembled and disassembled, and began moving, leading him around the curve of the shore.

He found her sitting full lotus in a field of white tulips on the opposite shore. Her eyes closed, her long golden hair blew in the breeze as she breathed deep. A small Silver Flame moved about her in a circle, completing one circle per breath.

Peter knew somehow that the Silver Flame was her equivalent of his Machine Elf, a representation of Olivia's soul. He smiled when the Machine Elf and the Silver Flame began orbiting each other.

"Hey..." he said, as he sat down in front of her and reached out to caress her cheek.

"Hey," she replied with an angelic smile. "Are you finally here?"

"Yeah. Sorry it took me so long. I'm not very good at this." he said.

"You're doing fine," she said, and opened her eyes. She watched the Silver Flame and Machine Elf dance around each other, then turned to him.

"Peter," she said, looking into his eyes, "...the bench by the river, near the lab. You know the one. Nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

Peter tapped Etta's arm three times, the signal that he wanted out. Walter injected him with a stimulant, while Astrid turned off the white noise and Etta removed the earphones and blindfold, and helped him to sit up.

He peered around the basement, following something only he could see. The LSD was clearly still affecting him.

"Peter." Walter said gently, "Focus on me."

Peter turned his head and gazed at Walter, gaining some coherence as he did so.

"Did it work?" Walter asked.

Peter nodded, and smiled drunkenly.

"Yeah. I have a date."


	8. Chapter 8

Olivia lay awake in the darkness, on her hard cot in the damp basement, listening to the nighttime creaks and groans of the old warehouse around her. When a distinctive pattern of knocks came at the door, she sighed in relief, grabbed her pistol, and answered the door.

"Hi." Sam said, "One of the sentries said she saw some suspicious activity at the abandoned factory to the north. I'm gonna grab a few guys and check it out, and I figured you'd want to know what I was doing."

He passed her a Coffee Chew, which Olivia accepted with a smile.

"You know..." she said, "These things taste terrible, but they're really addictive. I could have used them a few times on stakeout, in my former life."

Sam smiled. "Hey, you ready for your big date?"

Olivia nodded. "I feel like I should take a bath and put on a dress or something, but then I don't think Peter would recognize me."

Olivia pulled out a key she kept on a chain around her neck, and moved to a heavy iron safe in the corner to perform her morning ritual.

The safe contained the six anti-matter containment devices, a.k.a. annihilation bombs, that Peter built twenty years ago. The devices were shiny metal tubes, eighteen inches long, with a black plastic cap with instruments on one end.

Olivia only had a basic understanding of how the devices worked, but she knew that each contained one gram of anti-matter - enough to destroy Boston if the containment field inside failed. Each device had an indicator light. If the light were any color other than green, they were in desperate trouble.

She unlocked the safe and swung the door open. Six green lights greeted her, and she smiled in relief.

"I'm gonna take that as a good omen." Sam said. "What are you gonna do after meeting Peter?"

Olivia closed and locked the safe, and put the key back around her neck. "Not sure. I'll probably bring him back here. He should know what to do with the anti-matter."

Sam nodded. "Good luck, and be safe."

 

Peter and Etta arrived early for the meeting in the park. Of course, Olivia was already there, sitting on the bench she'd indicated in the shared dream, staring at the clear waters flowing past.

The sight of her gave Peter a funny feeling in his chest, and an odd sense of deja vu.

"That's Mom, isn't it?" Etta whispered.

Peter looked at Olivia on the bench again. A breeze picked up, and her long, blonde hair threatened to escape her ponytail. He smiled fondly.

"Yeah, that's her. Can you wait here for a minute, Princess?"

Etta nodded and wiped at her eyes.

"You okay?" Peter asked.

"Yeah. It's just...I've waited for this for twenty years.", she sniffed, "...And now I don't know what to say to her."

Etta was fighting a losing battle, trying to keep her tears in check. The hug Peter gave her didn't help.

"She's gonna be so proud of you..." he whispered, and Etta broke away from the hug and pushed him toward the bench.

Peter smiled, then turned and walked across the unkempt grass to the bench.

Olivia felt him sit next to her, smiled as a familiar finger brushed across the back of her hand. She turned toward him, her eyes shining, a warm sensation replacing the chill from the breeze.

"Peter!" she breathed his name like a prayer, "Oh, I can't believe it. I've missed you so much..."

She reached out to touch his chest, as if making sure he was physically present. His hand came up to caress her cheek, and she leaned into his touch, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Liv..." was all Peter could manage to choke out, gazing into her eyes.

She slid closer to him and threw her arms around his neck. They kissed.

An endless minute later, they broke apart. She laid her head against his chest and they held each other, with Peter stroking her hair, whispering a constant stream of endearments in her ear.

Presently, they separated again and Peter took Olivia's hands and stood, tugging her to her feet.

"Olivia..." he said, "I have someone for you to meet..."

There was something odd in Peter's voice, a hint of pride and eagerness she'd never heard before. He gestured, beckoning someone closer. She searched his face for a moment and then turned to face the girl who approached them.

"Do you... know me?" Etta asked hopefully.

Olivia looked at the young woman before her, an inscrutable expression on her face. She took in the height, the long blonde hair, the fair skin and the slender frame - all similar to her own. But the sky blue eyes... she glanced back at Peter, who was smiling broader than she'd ever seen him.

She reached out, then hesitated. After Etta's consenting nod, she hooked the chain around her neck with her finger and drew the necklace out of Etta's shirt to look at it.

Tears started flowing down Olivia's cheeks. "Henrietta. You still have Peter's bullet."

Etta smiled. "Mom."

They embraced and shed tears together for long time, no words necessary. Eventually, they broke apart and Olivia held Etta at arm's length, to inspect her up and down.

"Etta...how...oh, my baby girl..." Olivia stammered.

Etta smiled through her tears, grasped her mother's hand and kissed it. Then both of them were wrapped in Peter's arms.

The three of them spent the next two hours wandering the park hand in hand, so that Olivia and Etta could get to know one another.

Etta told of how Rachel raised Etta as her own daughter, how she grew up with Ella and Eddie as older siblings, and Nina Sharp as her foster-grandmother. As Peter had predicted, Etta's tale of moving back to Boston when she turned eighteen and joining Fringe Division to covertly search for her parents filled Olivia with pride and amazement.

Olivia frowned when Etta told her about the recently discovered high level of Cortexiphan in her body, and her pseudo-telepathic ability. And she wasn't at all pleased about recent events concerning William Bell.

"I can't believe you un-ambered him," she said, standing close to Peter. "After everything he's done, we're better off without him, Peter."

"That was Walter, honey. Apparently, we need him for some part of the device," Peter shifted his weight from foot to foot. It was the first time Etta had ever seen him nervous.

Olivia thought for a moment, then shrugged.

"What's done is done," she said. "Now, about the anti-matter... I have it stashed nearby, in an old warehouse my Resistance cell uses for a base."

Peter raised an eyebrow. "All in one place?"

"Yeah. Why?" Olivia asked.

"Murphy's Law." he said. At Olivia's raised eyebrow, he glanced at Etta, who recited the engineer's mantra.

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong," she said.

Olivia smiled at Etta, picturing father and daughter tinkering with electronics late into the night, then turned back to her husband. "The lights on all the devices were green. I checked earlier today."

Peter nodded. "It should be okay, then."

"After Sam Weiss hooked me up with the Resistance, I decided I didn't really trust them with weapons of mass destruction. Too many of them were more about taking revenge on the Loyalists, than getting rid of the Observers. So I stored the bombs in a safe, and did what I could to kick the anti-Loyalists out of the Resistance. Or at least out of the cell I controlled. But I think now that you and Walter are back, we should move the anti-matter somewhere safer."

Olivia led them through a long series of side streets into the decaying outskirts of Boston. The difference between the two parts of the city was astounding. There was a stark line between the favored Loyalist sections and the decaying, worn out Native occupied areas.

"Observers and Loyalists cluster in the city center, they get the best of everything. Utilities, technology, medical care, even recreation. Any place the Natives migrate to becomes a backwater. It's like this all across the country. Boston is actually considered pretty good," Etta explained.

Eventually, the dilapidated residential areas that Olivia led them through gave way to abandoned warehouses and factories as they entered the former industrial section of the city. The environs were in no better shape, but here and there were some signs of habitation, and they actually saw a few people combing the ruins.

"Scavengers..." said Etta, to her father's questioning glance, "I've told you about them. Looking for any bit of free tech they can get their hands on. You wouldn't believe how much an old lathe is worth these days."

Olivia led them to a particularly rundown abandoned factory and to a heavy metal door. She paused, then knocked on the door in a particular pattern. Another pattern answered, and then the door was unlocked and opened from inside.

"Hi Chad," Olivia greeted the young, shabbily dressed man who greeted them. "These two are with me, and they have the run of the place, okay? Tell the others?"

Chad had a bulky firearm slung off his shoulder, a stubby auto-shotgun with a drum magazine. He stared at Peter and Etta in turn, memorizing their faces. After looking at Etta, he gave a sideways glance at Olivia, obviously noting the family resemblance.

Chad nodded. "Anything you say, Olivia."

"Is Sam back?" Olivia asked.

Chad nodded again. "Yeah. Got here about half an hour ago. He's down in the basement."

Olivia nodded once, and led Peter and Etta down a nearby set of stairs into the bowels of the warehouse basement, which was in much better condition than the above-ground portions. It had power, and various rooms were being used to store weapons and supplies. They even passed what was apparently a small infirmary.

"This warehouse is sort of a central dispatch for the Resistance. Various cells meet here to coordinate operations," Olivia explained as they walked.

A middle-aged man with grey hair and beard turned a corner ahead of them.

"Sam!" Olivia said in greeting, then gestured towards Peter and Etta.

"Some introductions are in order. Sam Weiss, this is my husband Peter, and my daughter Etta."

Sam smiled broadly; Peter stepped forward to shake his hand.

"Peter..." Sam said, "I've heard so much about you over the years, I feel like I already know you."

Peter raised an eyebrow, and glanced at Olivia, who gave him an I'll tell you about it later look.

The quartet followed Olivia down another corridor until she stopped at a heavy grey metal door.

"Home sweet home," Olivia said, her tone ironic, as she produced a key and unlocked the door.

"Home sweet home" turned out to essentially be a janitor's storage room. It was a small room about twenty feet on a side, with one bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling for illumination. A large industrial metal sink was on one wall, a cot was pushed against another, a large trunk at its foot, and a table with an iron safe on it completed the furnishings.

"I've pretty much lived here for six months," Olivia explained. "I didn't feel comfortable letting the anti-matter out of my sight."

Peter cocked his head at the safe on the table, Olivia nodded and moved to it, pulling the key out from under her shirt and unlocking it. As she swung the door open, Etta reflected on the amount of nonverbal communication her parents shared; in the few hours she'd seen them together, they'd had several complete conversations without saying a word out loud.

That, along with the dreamscape they shared, really made her wonder.

"Peter..." Olivia said as she stepped away from the safe.

The indicator light on one of the anti-matter bombs was yellow. It stood out against the other five green lights.

Peter sighed, and rubbed his face, his scruff making a scratchy noise in the silence that had fallen over the chamber.

"Murphy, I hate you," he said, with feeling.

"So, how bad is this?" asked Sam Weiss. "What does yellow mean?"

Peter shook his head and crouched in front of the safe, gazing at the metallic tubes inside, his eyes on the one with the yellow light.

"When the light turns yellow, it means the containment field has been compromised, but is still intact. In that situation, the device slowly vents the anti-matter into the atmosphere, over a month's time. It would irradiate the area around the device, but prevent a catastrophic annihilation."

"Irradiate? You mean there's radiation in here?" Sam asked, alarmed.

Peter nodded. "Yeah. It wouldn't be very much though. Like taking an X-ray a day for an entire month. It's the safest design I could think of."

"What if the light turns red?" Etta asked for all of them.

Peter chuckled.

"Yeah, red is sort of a joke on my part, actually. That would mean the containment field has collapsed. Of course if that happened, you wouldn't live long enough for the light to register in your visual cortex."

"Can you fix it?" asked Olivia, even though she thought she knew the answer.

Peter sighed, and paced in circles in front of the safe for a few minutes before replying, apparently thinking deeply on the question. Finally, he shook his head.

"No. I never designed them to be fixable. Letting it vent is the safest thing to do. Otherwise, we risk turning Boston into a smoking hole in the ground."

Suddenly, a series of explosions echoed from up above, from the first floor of the warehouse.

"Gunfire..." Olivia said.

She was about to ask if Peter and Etta were armed, but noticed that all four of them had reflexively drawn firearms. Sam had his comically large .44 revolver, Olivia had a Beretta automatic, and Peter and Etta had produced oddly skeletal looking automatics that she recognized as similar to the anti-Observer handguns Bell had designed.

"Vance..." Sam snarled.

The quick popping of muffled automatic weapons fire echoed in the room.

"You think he sold us out?" Olivia asked.

Sam nodded. "Would you put it past him?"

Olivia shook her head. "I guess not. I suppose I should have killed him when I had the chance..."

Behind them, Peter burst into motion. Seizing the small backpack in which Olivia kept her small supply of personal items, he poured the contents on the floor. Then he quickly transferred the fully operational devices to the backpack. When he finished, he zipped the backpack up and passed it to Etta. He then seized the damaged device, carrying the cylinder in his right hand, his gun in his left.

"We can't let the anti-matter fall into the Observer's hands. If we have to, we should detonate it." Peter said grimly.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Olivia replied, then nodded toward the door. "There's a loading dock down the corridor. We can escape through there."

They moved through the door, and down the corridor, Olivia and Sam leading the way, Peter and Etta bringing up the rear with the anti-matter bombs. Echoes of gunfire and screams, the sounds of combat, became fainter as they moved further away from Olivia's room.

Turning the corner, they came face to face with a small patrol, who were evidently just as shocked to encounter them. The two guards escorting the Observer standing behind them dropped immediately, felled by shots from Sam's revolver and Olivia's automatic. Then they turned their guns on the Observer.

Sam's next shot was deflected back to it's source by an impossibly fast swipe of the tall, pallid man's hand, while the Observer simultaneously dodged Olivia's bullet. The .44 slug passed through Sam, spraying flesh and blood on the wall next to him as his knees buckled and he fell to the floor. Olivia continued firing her gun, as she tried to keep her rising panic from activating her pyro-kinetic abilities. Summoning fire in the narrow corridor would probably cook everybody.

Peter stepped forward, crouching over Sam, bringing his anti-Observer gun to bear; Etta was unable to fire, her mother blocking her view of the action.

The weapon Peter held fired a 3 millimeter hypervelocity bullet; supposedly fast enough that an Observer would never be able to dodge or deflect. Peter's first shot was slightly off target, but still partly successful - it passed through the hand that intended to block it, leaving a small, red hole in the Observer's palm, but missing his torso and any vital organs therein.

It also had the unfortunate effect of focusing all the Observer's attention on Peter.

The tall man in the grey suit stared at him, and Peter suddenly felt an intense pressure in his head, as if a grenade had gone off between his ears. Time seemed to slow down. He could hear Olivia growl as she hit the magazine release on her gun, and heard an alarming groan from Sam on the floor.

The Observer's eyes opened wide, and he gasped. "You! Peter Bishop!" he said.

The scan of Peter's brain increased in intensity, The Observer riffling through his memories as if they were pages in a paperback book. Peter heard Etta's enraged yell, as he pitched forward and the concrete floor rose up to meet him, and everything faded to black.

Peter came to cradled in Olivia's arms, with Etta standing guard over them, holding a pair of pistols.

"Uhhhh," he moaned. "How long was I out?"

"Shhh..." Olivia whispered, wiping his bleeding nose with a dirty cloth, "Just a few minutes."

Etta crouched and examined him, her fingers cupping his chin, looking into his eyes. Then she sighed and ruffled his hair.

"You're lucky, Dad. He did a deep scan on you. Sometimes that kills people, gives them a brain hemorrhage."

"Sam?" Peter asked.

Olivia lowered her gaze. "Didn't make it." she said quietly.

"Oh." Peter said, still somewhat dazed.

His hand found Olivia's and pulled it up to his lips for a quick, comforting kiss – leaving a small smear of his blood across her knuckles.

"I'm sorry; I know he was your friend," Peter whispered.

"I'll grieve later. Can you walk?" Olivia asked.

Peter nodded and the two of them helped him to his feet. Once up, Peter swayed a bit too much, so Olivia threw his arm across her shoulders and grabbed him around the waist. Peter was too dizzy to object. Etta passed the backpack containing the anti-matter devices to Olivia, who shouldered it, then proceeded ahead of them, guns raised. They continued down the corridor, walking carefully around the corpse of the Observer that had scanned Peter.

The Observer had been shot in the head, multiple times, the grey ooze of his brain spilling out of his skull onto the floor. Etta gave him an unsubtle kick to the skull as she walked around him, smearing some blood and grey matter on her boot.

"Peter..." Olivia whispered into his ear, "Etta did something back there. I don't know...she blocked the scan, or something. If she hadn't, I think you would have died."

Peter swallowed, and whispered his reply. "If she's anything like you...and I know she's a lot like you...then her abilities are basically instinctual. Her instinct was to protect me, and she did."

Another Observer was waiting for them at the loading dock. He spun and raised his weapon before any of them could react – and froze in place, his face locked into a surprised expression.

Peter glanced at Olivia, who glanced back and shook her head. She wasn't doing this, it was Etta.

Etta fired her pistol, the unusual, high pitched report echoing in the small room; her hypervelocity bullet entered between the Observer's panicked eyes and blew the back of his skull off. Then she advanced and opened the doors of the loading dock, checking for opposition; finding none, she held the doors open for her parents.

Peter and Olivia exchanged a concerned glance. By chance or design, their daughter seemed to be an effective weapon against the Observers.

"What do we do about the damaged device?" Olivia asked.

"The river," Peter replied.

 

It was dark when they arrived at the new Bishop household, and nearly a half hour after curfew. Simon leaped up to help Peter to a nearby armchair, while Etta made the introductions.

"Mom, this is Simon Foster, my partner in Fringe Division. Simon, this is my mother, Olivia Dunham-Bishop," she said, beaming.

"Oh..." Simon said with a tone of awe. "I'm so pleased to meet you."

Astrid squealed with delight and leaped forward to hug Olivia, then collapsed in tears, to be comforted by Peter. Walter, drawn upstairs by all the commotion, stood still, staring with his mouth open, as if unable to comprehend the sight of his daughter-in-law, returned to the fold.

"Hello, Walter," Olivia said, the smile evident in her voice. "I'm glad to see you again."

The mask of objectivity and arrogance slipped from Walter's face and he bounded forward to embrace Olivia and spin her around in a state of ecstatic joy, causing happy laughter to break out among the gathered extended family.

Even Bell appeared pleased when he entered the room, a grin lightening his normal scowl.

Walter grinned at Olivia and winked, some remnant of the ladies' man of his youth becoming apparent.

"Now, you should go upstairs and have intercourse with Peter," he said, in all seriousness. "I'm sure Henrietta would enjoy having a brother or sister to play with."


	9. Chapter 9

Upon discovering the old house had hot water and an actual bathtub, Olivia disappeared for an hour, allowing herself the luxury of a long soak. With bubbles, of course.

When she emerged, clean and relaxed, and wearing a cotton robe that must have belonged to Etta, she padded upstairs to the attic bedroom, to find Peter sprawled loose-limbed across the bed, already dozing.

He cracked an eye open when the door creaked, and gazed with interest as she dropped the robe on a nearby chair, a delighted smile crinkling the faint lines of his face. She was gloriously naked.

"Did you miss me?" Olivia teased, as she crawled into bed with him.

"More than you'll ever know," he replied with feeling, as he accepted her into his arms. He nuzzled her neck, and breathed in her freshly almond-scented, and slightly damp, hair. Enjoying the simple closeness, they laid in bed and just held each other for endless minutes, trading occasional kisses, his fingers running through her hair, hers softly caressing his chest as she listened to his heart beat.

"Olivia? In the dream we shared, did you really mean..." Peter finally asked.

Olivia turned her head to look at him and nodded. "Yes."

Peter watched her face intently. "Now...would not be the ideal time," echoing something she'd said to him, on the topic of more children, years before.

"Yeah. I kind of turned a corner on that, while we were apart. There is no ideal time, Peter. We took all those precautions, and we still didn't get to see Etta grow up. It's a...miracle...that we get to know her as an adult."

She laid her head on his chest again, and they lay together in affectionate silence for a few more minutes, until Peter chuckled.

"What?" Olivia asked.

"Well, depending on how you look at it, we haven't had sex for either six months or twenty years."

Olivia laughed, and joined in the silliness. "...And we're either thirty eight or fifty eight years old..."

Peter shook his head. "Not me. I didn't exist until 2011. So I'm only twenty five, going by calendar years."

Olivia tweaked her husband's ribs fondly, making him squirm. "I'm cradle robbing! Or I was..."

Peter fought back laughter.

"But I remember another fifteen years from a third timeline, I could technically be forty. And I was married to you for those fifteen years, so I've been married to you for either nineteen or thirty nine years, while you've only been married to me for four years or twenty four."

The two of them spent the next few minutes shaking with uncontrolled laughter. Eventually, Peter sobered, and wiped at his eyes. "Our lives are so weird."

They gazed lovingly into each other's eyes for a moment. Finally Olivia tugged on the waistband of Peter's boxer shorts.

"You're a little overdressed if we're gonna work on making that little boy." she said with a wink.

 

Etta Bishop laid awake deep into the night, tossing and turning or simply staring at the ceiling of her room, unable to quiet her racing mind. Finally she sighed in frustration, sat up and pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and went to find something more productive with which to occupy herself.

Etta was introspective enough to know exactly what was wrong. She had succeeded in her life's major goal – reuniting with her parents – and now didn't know what to do with the rest of her life. Etta supposed that succeeding early was a good problem to have, but nonetheless, it was difficult and worrisome for someone as goal-oriented as she was.

Leaving her bedroom and entering the living room, she saw light spilling out from the kitchen and heard Walter talking to himself. The inhabitants of the Bishop household kept some truly strange hours, she reflected with some amusement. But maybe sharing some cookies and conversation with her grandfather would help her get back to sleep. He always had such amusing stories to tell.

She rounded the corner and entered the kitchen – and stopped short, her arms flailing to maintain balance, her eyes shot wide open. Walter was standing at the kitchen sink, whisking some eggs in a bowl.

Naked as a jaybird. Well, except for his socks.

Fortunately, he was turned away from her. As it was, she was getting a good view of the full moon.

"Uh..." she stammered, "Granddad...don't you think...that uh...it'd be safer if you put on some..."

Speaking was the worst possible thing she could have done in that situation. Hearing her, Walter turned around and smiled enthusiastically.

"Henrietta! What a joy to see you! Would you like to help me make some butterscotch-oatmeal cookies? It will be just like when you were a little girl!"

Eyes up, Etta thought, smiling at the absurdity of the situation she found herself in. Remember, Walter is a few cards short of a full deck. It's not his fault. Eyesupeyesupeyesup...

Astrid stuck her head in the kitchen.

"Walter!" she scolded, "...put some pants on before you scar your granddaughter for life!"

Startled, Walter looked down at himself, realizing at that instant that he was completely naked. He didn't seem embarrassed, more puzzled by the objection.

"Well, we're all fam..." he started.

"Don't even finish that sentence," Astrid interrupted.

Walter growled. "Oh, all right."

He walked down the stairs to the basement in a huff, muttering about prudes. "Olivia never objects when I'm naked..."

"That's because she gave up, years ago!" Astrid replied.

"Thank you, Aunt Astrid." Etta said, sighing in relief, "I don't know what we'd do without you."

"Just a word of advice, Etta," Astrid said, "...Stay in your room until breakfast on Tuesday."

 

For the first time in far too long, Olivia woke up naked and happy, enveloped in Peter's arms, his broad, bare chest warming her back. She smiled in the darkness, and nuzzled his hand that clasped hers.

"Mmmmm." She heard him rumble in her ear. "It's too early for good morning, even for you. Go back to sleep, or have sex with me again."

Olivia giggled softly. At that moment, she even loved Peter's drowsy grumpiness.

"Okay, sleepyhead," she whispered.

More content than she had been in years, Olivia dozed off again.

 

At the break of dawn, there was a soft knock at the door. Of course, Olivia was already awake. Peter groaned and drowsily buried his head under the blankets, muttering something about Dunham women. Olivia snorted in amusement, and quickly pulled on one of Peter's cast-aside shirts.

"Come in, Etta." she said.

The door opened and their daughter entered, carrying two large, steaming mugs, both of which she handed to Olivia after smirking at Peter's form hidden under the blankets.

"Good morning. I've brought you coffee, and Astrid and Granddad are downstairs making breakfast. Should be ready in fifteen minutes or so. Just relax, I'll bring it up to you."

"She gets the early bird thing from you," Peter grumbled, after emerging from under the blanket and accepting a mug. "It's definitely not a Bishop trait."

"Our...twenty-four-year-old daughter is bringing us breakfast in bed." Olivia marveled.

"Mmmm. you'll get used to it. I did." Peter yawned and stretched, while Olivia took an experimental sip of her coffee, and made a sour face.

"Our daughter makes terrible coffee." she said.

"Yeah. Technically it isn't coffee. It's coffee chews dissolved in boiling water, and you'll get used to that, too."

Olivia went silent, staring into space as she sipped her coffee.

"What?" Peter asked, though he thought he had a good idea of what was troubling her.

"It just sunk in. My little sister is older than I am. Rachel is fifty five, now. Ella is thirty two." Olivia replied, with a sigh.

"Well, if you go by how many years since your birth, you're still older than Rachel is."

She gazed at him, eyebrow raised. "Not helping, Peter."

Fifteen minutes later, Etta returned carrying a tray piled with a hearty breakfast, which she placed on a chair she pulled over to their bedside.

"All right, I'll let you two eat in peace...oh Mom? Astrid and I were wondering if you'd join us for some girl time, later today?" she asked hopefully.

Olivia looked at Peter, who smiled.

"All I'm going to be doing today is working in the basement with Bell and Walter. Go have girl time."

 

Wispy clouds of smoke filled the basement lab with a distinctive aroma. Walter leaned back in his chair, puffing on a fat joint, doodling on a tablet computer.

"Peter doesn't like me." Bell said across the basement lab to Walter, puffing his own blunt.

Bell used a watchmaker's screwdriver to make a minute adjustment to the prosthetic limb he was working on. The prosthesis resembled a skeletal hand made of grey plastic and black metal.

Walter frowned. "Whatever gave you that impression? I mean, using his wife for a power source to destroy the universe, betraying us to the Observers...I just remembered I don't like you anymore, either. Why the hell am I sharing my weed with you?"

Bell grimaced. "It's not your weed. And I don't have any ill feelings toward him or you. But his attitude will interfere with our working relationship. Things will go much slower with Peter constantly double checking my work on the control matrix."

Walter shook his head. "That's the price of getting you out of the amber. Trust has to be earned, William, and I'm afraid you've built up quite a debt to us on that front."

Bell nodded. "I understand all that. But to be honest, I'm more concerned with what he'll do to me after I build the matrix."

Walter sighed. "I won't let him kill you, William. Neither would Olivia, for all that you've done to her."

Bell smirked, put down the screwdriver, and picked up the prosthetic hand, inserting the stump of his right arm into a socket,wincing at a twinge of pain as he did so. He closed an arrangement of clamps, locking the prosthesis to his arm, then experimented with flexing his new fingers and bending the artificial wrist.

"Well, I suppose this will have to do." said Bell.

The two of them turned, hearing footsteps coming down the stairs. Peter appeared, fanning his hands in a vain attempt to disperse the intoxicating clouds.

"Shit," he said, "...I really didn't want to get high today. Marijuana and anti-matter don't mix!"

Peter fixed his cold gaze on Bell, then his eyes moved to the new prosthetic hand.

"Wonderful..." Peter sneered, "We have our very own Darth Vader."

 

It turned out that "Girl Time" with Etta and Astrid meant going out into the woods and shooting things, an activity Olivia could definitely get behind.

Etta and Astrid lead her on a long walk to where an old jeep was concealed in a patch of woods on the edge of town. After an hour's drive on dilapidated rural roads, Etta stopped the vehicle at an abandoned farm.

Olivia watched as her daughter walked back from the long line of old paint cans she'd set up along an overgrown wooden fence as their targets.

"Sixty paces." Etta said. She drew her pistol, turned and opened fire, discharging her weapon until the twenty rounds in the magazine were gone. Olivia felt, more than heard, the eerie, high pitched reports of the hyper-velocity pistol.

Olivia raised an admiring eyebrow. "Nice shooting, honey."

Astrid chuckled. "Not as good as you think. The high speed bullets shoot flat, out to almost forty yards. You don't really have to correct for range."

"Aunt Astrid," Etta pouted, "...don't tell her all our secrets!"

Olivia stepped up to the line and raised the pistol they'd given her. More cautious than Etta, she spaced her shots, putting one round into the dead center of each of her targets.

"Nice. Kicks like a .22, hits like a .45!" she said, admiring her own excellent marksmanship.

Olivia moved to stand beside her daughter as Astrid stepped forward.

"Etta," Olivia said quietly, "...I want to talk to you about what you did at the warehouse. It's kind of important."

Etta looked at her and nodded. "Okay."

"When was the first you realized you had...an ability?" Olivia asked, stepping a little closer.

"I was fourteen the first time it happened, still living with Aunt Rachel in Chicago. An incident happened...a bomb. I didn't have anything to do with it, but I was nearby, so I got detained. They brought in an Observer to read all the witnesses and suspects. When he read me...I don't know. I was scared, and I just wanted to go home. So...I put my thoughts into his head, trying to make him believe that I hadn't seen or heard anything. It worked. He was convinced I hadn't even been in the area, and that I'd been detained by mistake. He ordered me released immediately."

Olivia's eyes had widened. "...that sounds useful."

Etta nodded. "It has been a few times. It certainly helped me in Fringe division, and in working for the Resistance. I could keep information secret, so I did a lot of courier work...taking messages between cells, that sort of thing. Still do."

Astrid finished her turn at shooting and approached, stopped at a respectful distance to listen to their conversation.

"Now...about what happened at that warehouse. When the Observer attacked us?" Olivia asked.

Etta nodded. "Yeah. Well...Dad was in trouble. And it just happened. It was like I shoved all of my thoughts into his head at once, and it overwhelmed him. I did it to the second one, too."

Olivia nodded, and rubbed Etta's arm affectionately. "I have a theory, Etta. If Astrid agrees, I want you to try to push one thought, just one thought into her head."

"Why me?" objected Astrid.

"Because one Cortexiphan subject can't affect another," Olivia said, "Nick Lane couldn't project his emotions onto me, and Simon Phillips couldn't read my mind. It could be risky, though."

Astrid thought for a moment, then nodded. "I trust Etta."

Olivia smiled. "Thank you. Etta?"

Her daughter nodded, and turned towards Astrid. "Okay, Mom. How do I do this?"

Olivia shrugged. "I don't know, honey. When I move things, I sort of reach out with my mind and feel them. Like I have an extra arm. And I'm just really pissed off or afraid when I burn them. I don't know how it works for you."

Etta nodded, and then gazed intensely at Astrid. After a few seconds, Astrid gasped, held up her hand and said, "Apples. I 'm picturing a basket full of apples."

Etta nodded. "That's what I sent. So I'm what...a reverse telepath? A mind writer?"

Olivia sighed, thinking of all the difficulties her abilities had brought to her life. She reached out and stroked her daughter's back, trying to impart some comfort.

"Something like that. I'm sorry, honey," she said.

Etta looked at her and smiled. "I'm not. I like being special."

 

Having three geniuses in the house certainly made it easy to triple check their work. Which was good, because the Device they were assembling was quite definitely a one shot, all or nothing proposition.

"Six dimensional equations make my head hurt." Peter complained, as he checked Walter's math, "Why does it take so much energy to do what we're trying to do? Five grams of anti-matter, and it'll barely reach a one hundred meter radius."

"A one hundred meter sphere..." Walter mused, "Placement of the device will be critical."

"Another gram of anti-matter, and the sphere balloons out to one thousand meters." Bell said, "It's a shame Peter threw the other container in the river."

Peter glared at Bell. "You try to figure out how to contain a leaking anti-matter bomb. Without dying of radiation exposure or blowing up Boston."

Bell held up his hands and smiled. "I didn't mean it as criticism. Your design for anti-matter containment is remarkable, even more so for someone of your limited education. And I'm sure you've realized you've solved the energy crisis. Massive Dynamic will probably license the technology from you, assuming we survive this crisis."

Peter raised an eyebrow, but Bell interrupted him before he could reply.

"...but circumstances have conspired against us. We really do need more power for the Device...and I really need a cup of tea."

Bell left for the kitchen. When he was out of earshot, Peter turned to Walter.

"Have you been thinking about...Etta's condition?" he asked.

Walter nodded, and bit into a Red Vine with gusto. "Yes, it's been in the back of my mind, son."

"Any conclusions?"

Walter nodded. "I don't believe her body could be synthesizing the Cortexiphan. She's been dosed."

Peter's face turned red. "I'll kill him..." he sputtered, starting to stand up.

"Peter!" Walter halted his son by seizing his forearms. "It couldn't have been William, he was in the amber, remember?"

Peter thought for a moment, then calmed himself and sat down. "It's a short list of suspects," he said.

Walter nodded. "Nina Sharp."

 

Astrid Farnsworth stepped forward and released her ball, sending it thundering down the alley. Strike.

"Nice." Etta growled, from the scoring table. Never having played, her aunt was beating her badly, and the Dunham competitive nature was rearing its head.

After spending two hours in the woods shooting, and a picnic lunch, Olivia had requested that they return to the city; she had something important to do. She'd directed them to Sam's bowling alley.

Olivia emerged from the basement, carrying three bottles of beer and an opener. She distributed the bottles and opened them, then tossed the opener on the scoring bench.

"Sam liked his beer," Olivia said in explanation. "And I know he wouldn't want us to mourn his passing, so let's celebrate instead."

Olivia looked down for a second, to gather her thoughts. "I've known Sam for over twenty years, and in two timelines. He helped me a lot during a difficult time in my life, and he literally helped save the world once. So..."

They raised their bottles, took a sip in unison, and grimaced.

"Ewww," Etta said, "...skunky beer."

"All right..." Astrid said, "Now I have to finish kicking Etta's ass at bowling."

 

Hours later, Peter carefully lowered the last of the five anti-matter containment devices into a metal tube inside the body of the Device, adding his contribution to one of the most advanced pieces of technology ever created. He picked up a nearby boxy instrument, and touched the attached probe to a contact on the outside of the Device, then checked the reading.

"Gentleman, the Device is powered." he announced.

Bell stepped forward, holding an octagonal plate with a holographic interface projector – the control matrix. He spent the next hour plugging in over one hundred fiber optic connections. Finally, he waved his hand in front of the interface, and green status messages projected themselves into the air.

"The Device is complete." Bell said softly.

"I feel like we should smash a bottle of champagne on it, and give it a female name," Walter said. "I suppose we'll have to smoke some Brown Betty and name it Eunice."

"Eunice?" asked Peter in mock disbelief.

"She was a very strange girl," muttered Walter, "...wasn't she, Belly?"

Bell nodded solemnly. "Yes, Eunice was very strange."

"Eunice was a cow," Walter explained to Peter. "A very strange cow."

 

Olivia, Astrid and Etta returned to the Bishop household a half hour before curfew. Peter and Simon had spent the last half hour pacing the living room, trading scenarios of what could have gone wrong and generally making each other extremely nervous.

They were very relieved when the women arrived home. Peter leaped forward to embrace his wife and daughter, then hugged Astrid while Simon repeated the procedure with Etta.

"Well, we've made progress," Peter said. "We finished the device. But the range is limited, so we have to brainstorm a plan to get a majority of Observers in one place to use it."

Peter led them into the living room where Walter and Bell were waiting, bickering on the couch.

"Etta will probably be able to help with that," Olivia said quietly. "I've been thinking about it a lot."

"Indeed. She will be vital to future events."

The voice was soft, emotionless, and familiar. All eyes moved to the center of the living room, where a short, pale man in a grey suit and fedora, with a black eyepatch covering his left eye, had simply appeared out of nothing.

September had returned.


	10. Chapter 10

"Don't shoot!" Peter yelled, and quickly stepped between September and Simon and Etta, who had drawn their pistols upon sighting the Observer in their living room.

There was a brief, but tense, standoff as the two Fringe Division agents stared over the sights of their guns and past Peter, while September simply stared back, his head cocked at a strange angle. Olivia wondered how the fedora stayed on his bald pate and about the new eyepatch.

"Don't you ever knock?" Peter asked September over his shoulder.

His response was apparently casual enough to set Etta and Simon's minds at ease; they both holstered their weapons, though they continued to be wary, and some of the tension in the room faded.

"I... do not use the door," said September.

"Maybe you should start," suggested Peter.

"So fill us in, September," Olivia said. "The last I saw you was six months ago. You'd been shot by a patrol."

The Observer turned to Olivia and nodded slightly.

"After being shot, I displaced myself several million years in time, far enough that the Observers would not care to pursue me. There, I could treat my injuries... and determine how they were able to track me. I suspected it was one of my implants, one that only functioned when I moved through time. After several months of trial and error… I determined that the implant in question resided in my left eye."

Everyone stared at September in shock, as he gazed at them with his remaining eye, the missing one covered by a black leather eyepatch. Finally Simon spoke up from where he sat on the couch beside Etta.

"So...you plucked it out?" he asked.

The Observer nodded.

"And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell," Walter quoted. "...how very biblical of you."

September nodded again, to acknowledge Walter's words.

"Indeed. The Observers can not track me when I move through spacetime now. And I now believe that the implant had other functions. It imposed a... certain uniformity of thought among my brethren."

Peter nodded. "It brainwashed you."

September stared at him, clearly puzzled by the colloquialism.

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, trying to forestall the tension headache he felt approaching. "It's a figure of speech. I meant it controlled you."

"Not exactly. It seemed to forbid certain lines of thought. Now that I have removed it, I have no such constraints."

Peter sighed. "That's what I said..."

"That doesn't matter..." Walter interrupted. "September, we need your help."

The others listened quietly while Walter explained the purpose of Eunice, the device recently assembled in the basement, which was to trap the Observers in a pocket universe it created around itself. When he finished with the explanation, Walter sighed.

"The problem is due to the missing anti-matter. Eunice isn't fully powered, she will only enclose a sphere one hundred meters across. We need your help to come up with a plan to get as many Observers as possible within the area of effect."

September stared into space for a full minute before replying.

"That... is a difficult problem. One that I do not see an immediate answer to. But I can foresee an additional difficulty. The state that... Eunice will put the Observer's into is not unlike mine, when they locked me out of the universe as punishment. I must find and disable the Beacon, or the Observer's might be able to return just as I was able to."

Peter stared at the shorter man. "I thought you couldn't touch it yourself..."

"I cannot," replied September, "...I need someone to travel with me."

The Observer looked up at Peter, clearly intending for him to be that person, without coming out and asking. Peter rubbed his face, lines of worry showing on his brow.

"How long will this take?" Peter finally asked, after a moment of consideration.

"Objectively? Very little time at all. To your friends you may only be gone a day or two. Subjectively... you will perceive some time passing."

Peter sighed. "Okay."

"Wait...you're going? Right now?" Etta objected, as the Observer pulled a small device out of his pocket and began fussing with it.

"It'll only be a couple of days, Princess. And I trust September," Peter stepped forward and embraced his daughter. "Be careful while I'm gone."

Peter let Etta go, and turned toward Olivia.

"Peter..." Olivia started to say, and then September reached out and touched his arm, and the two of them were gone, almost as if they'd never been there at all.

"...be safe," finished Olivia, addressing empty air.

Everyone stood looking at each other, unsure of what to do now. Finally, Simon cleared his throat and asked, "Is it always like this around you people?"

Olivia shrugged. "Pretty much."

 

Phillip Broyles groaned softly, and shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but the pain in his side remained, his constant companion these last few weeks. Finally, he sighed and gave in, producing a bottle of pills from his pocket. He shook out two, and swallowed them with a sip of water from the glass on his desk.

It was the first time he'd taken the narcotics he'd been prescribed. He had feared the painkillers would interfere with his work, but over the days and weeks the constant ache in his side had increased to the point where it was becoming an issue in itself. He would snap randomly at agents who made the smallest mistakes, stalking around the offices of Fringe division like an angry spectre. Of course, the outbursts weren't actually random – at each one, he was riding the crest of a wave of pain. Just like now.

Stubbornness and pride had gotten him through six weeks. It would have to do.

Twenty minutes later, Broyles had the relief he desired, along with the fuzzy headedness he'd feared. He wasn't even upset when Captain Windmark barged into his office, unannounced.

"Two dead Observers!" Windmark said, in the raised voice that counted as a shout among his kind.

Broyles looked at him placidly. Without the pain, he actually felt something like his old self again. "And this concerns me how? I'm Native-On-Native crime... even if you suspect a Native killed your evolved brethren, this isn't my purview."

"They were killed by hypervelocity weapons... similiar to ones used by Fringe Division, twenty years ago," Windmark said.

Windmark's agitation revealed itself in tiny movements throughout his frame, the Observer equivalent of a nervous tick. Nobody would notice it unless you knew what to look for, and Broyles had been dealing with Windmark for two decades.

Phillip found he was enjoying this for once.

"You still have a fugitive member of the original Observer team. It was September, most likely. He has access to that kind of technology, and can match your Observers, as far as time shifting and mind reading goes."

"We have... methods of tracking him. He has not moved through spacetime in other than a normal manner for six months."

"Really? That's interesting. I did not know that," Broyles replied.

Phillip bent down and opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a large burlap sack, which he threw on his desktop and opened to reveal hundreds of the illicit holochips. He randomly grabbed one, placed it on his desk and activated it.

"September has been busy," Broyles said, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice, "...maybe you can't track him as well as you thought."

"If your office has any involvement in these incidents..." Windmark started to threaten...only to be interrupted by a loud noise from the holochip. Both of them looked at the device in question.

The hologram of the rogue Observer, wearing a medieval jester's hat, leaned forward and loudly blew a wet raspberry at his audience. Broyles burst out in laughter. Windmark turned and left Broyles office without another word.

 

"Damnit," Peter said. "You didn't give me a chance to say goodbye to Olivia or Walter."

The house – and the neighborhood, and the entire city of Boston, for that matter, had disappeared around them, replaced by a dense forest. It was mid day, judging by the height of the sun. After a few seconds, they heard the noises of startled woodland wildlife start up again.

"Where are we?" Peter asked.

September looked up from the instrument he was consulting.

"Where is the wrong question. We have traveled through time, not space," he replied.

"When are we, then?" Peter asked.

September didn't answer, choosing to fiddle with the instrument in his hands. Peter recognized it as the device used to track the Beacon; he had used it himself years before. He realized that it wasn't emitting the tones that indicated it was tracking the device.

"Problem?" he asked quietly.

September continued to fuss with his instrument as he replied.

"No. The Beacon has not arrived yet, which is ideal. We merely have to move to where it will be, which is not far. Follow me."

September walked off in a southeasterly direction, and Peter followed him through the forest.

Travel through the dense forest was more difficult than Peter could have ever anticipated. The ground was covered by an inches thick layer of composting pine needles. Their feet sank deep, making it twice as hard to move as it should have been otherwise.

Although Peter heard creatures scurrying through the trees around them, they were remarkably wary of the pair of travelers, and stayed out of sight. He only caught a few glimmers of eyes or a fuzzy tail.

"Do we have to worry about a saber toothed cat leaping out and trying to eat us?" Peter asked.

September glanced back. "No. This is soon after the disappearance of the dinosaurs. The dominant wildlife is small mammals. I doubt a proto-squirrel would pose a threat to us."

Peter did a double take. Had an Observer made a joke, weak as it was?

 

The next morning, Etta sat beside her mother on a bench in the park, watching the weeds grow and the river slowly flow past them as they waited for Nina to arrive.

"If you don't mind my asking," Etta said, "why did you want to come? You don't seem all that close to Nina."

Olivia sighed.

"We were once very close. She actually raised Rachel and I, after your grandmother died. It's just... complicated." Olivia stared out at the river, "I mainly just want to find out if she dosed you with Cortexiphan, when you were a child."

Etta spotted Nina approaching from the entrance to the park. "Here she comes."

"Olive!" Nina said, as she slowly rolled up in her motorized wheelchair. "I wondered if you would find the time to visit me. I wish we could've arranged a proper reunion."

"Hello, Nina," Olivia said, as she and Etta stood up.

Nina clasped Olivia's hand and squeezed it affectionately.

"I didn't dare hope I would ever see you again. I watched over Rachel and Etta from afar, but I just couldn't..."

Nina broke off abruptly, fighting back tears. There followed an awkward silence, as Olivia and Nina simply stared at each other. Finally, Nina's face fell, like an ice shelf separating itself from a larger glacier and falling into the sea. "You know..."

"Yes, we know," Olivia replied. "Peter had Walter check Etta's blood for Cortexiphan. The result they got was a lot higher than it should have been, even given her childhood exposure from me."

Olivia shook her head. "Nina, how could you? My child? What could make you think that was okay?"

Nina sighed and shook her head.

"You were always so...idealistic. We needed a weapon against the Observers, Olive, and you weren't available. I couldn't afford to wait years or decades on the assumption that you would return. I don't feel guilty for simply doing what needed to be done, for the good of the human race."

Etta had alternated looking from Nina to Olivia during the conversation. Finally, she interrupted.

"What was the plan for me? Surely you didn't think I could take on all of the Observer s by myself. That's...crazy."

Nina studied Etta for a moment, as if weighing whether she could handle the truth. Eventually she spoke.

"No. You were intended as the progenitor of a new type of human being. Your children would have eventually been the ones to bring the fight to the Observers. We foresaw the conflict taking at least another thirty years after you reached adulthood."

Olivia shook her head. "My God. It was a continuation of the Cortexiphan trials."

Nina nodded. "Yes. You were the only successful result of the original trials, Olive. It stood to reason that your child would be a successful seed for the second set, the application phase."

Olivia interposed her hands, as if she were warding off an assault from Nina, then turned and walked away.

"I've heard everything I need to." she said, over her shoulder.

"Olive?" Nina called after her, "I still care for you. That never changed."

Olivia didn't look back.

Nina turned to Etta. "We still have Phillip in place at Fringe Division, but we won't for much longer. He's dying. We can't afford waste a resource like that, Etta."

Ettta nodded. "We have something in the works. I'll contact you soon."

Then Etta followed her mother out of the park, leaving Nina sitting alone, watching the river.

 

Walter gazed at the back of Bell's skull through a cloud of marijuana smoke. They were in the basement, each of them working on their separate projects.

"William," Walter asked. "I want to ask you about something."

"What, Walter?" Bell asked, as he made a minute adjustment to his prosthetic hand.

"Earlier, when we assembling the machine, you mentioned something about Peter's education."

Walter sat up, as Bell swiveled in his seat to face him.

"What was it you said? Oh yes, you said his design for anti-matter containment was remarkable, for one of his limited education. What did you mean by that?"

Bell grinned and shrugged. "I don't really recall saying that. I suppose I meant that he simply... hasn't applied himself, as he could have."

Bell swiveled in his chair, going back to working on his prosthetic hand. Walter spun in his own chair, swinging a heavy wrench in a long arc, the endpoint of which intersected with the back of Bell's skull. Bell slumped in his chair, unconscious.

"That's for thinking I don't know my own son." Walter growled, "Peter told me he dropped out of high school years ago. But you couldn't have known that, unless you knew him from the prior timeline He made up the advanced degrees in physics and electrical engineering so he could justify a better consultant's fee from the government. But only Olivia and I knew the truth."

Minutes later, Walter had Bell trussed up like a holiday ham. Then he went upstairs to find that boy who was always hanging around his granddaughter.

Two time travelers sat in a small clearing in a vast forest, waiting patiently for their quarry, the Beacon, to arrive.

 

Peter had put his rusty Boy Scout skills to good use in building them a roaring campfire out of deadwood he'd found at the edge of the clearing. A good thing too, for a chill wind had started blowing when the sun went down. The fire also kept any of the odd wildlife they heard making noises deep in the forest at bay.

Whenever they were, it was far enough displaced in time that Peter couldn't recognize any of the constellations in the night sky overhead. Eons had passed, that much was certain.

It was a testament to the weirdness of Peter's life that, despite all of this, what drove him to comment was what September was doing across the fire from him.

"Are you making s'mores?" Peter asked.

"Yes." September replied simply.

Peter watched, incredulous, as the Observer mashed two graham crackers around his marshmallow and chocolate concoction and held it out for Peter.

"So you just walk around with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers in your pockets?" Peter said, as he accepted the treat. "Thank you, by the way."

"Yes." September repeated as he prepared one for himself. "Doctor Bishop taught me to appreciate these."

As he munched the treat, Peter sorted several questions he had in his mind. He had an Observer available for answering questions, and wanted to make the best use of the time.

"September. I know I've asked this before, but I was wondering if you'd figured out anything about why I came back to the rewritten timeline."

September munched his s 'more for a minute before he replied.

"I do not know. My working theory was simply that Walter and Olivia's love brought you back to the timeline they were in. I have revised that theory, in light of recent events."

"What do you mean? And understand that I'm pretty much an amateur time traveler here." Peter said.

September looked across the flames at him.

"In a much earlier timeline, which has long since been overwritten, your biological father cured your childhood disease. You met Olivia Dunham when she crossed over into your universe as a child, but she returned to her universe soon after."

September paused to char another marshmallow, before continuing.

"In that timeline, the Cortexiphan trials continued for many more years than they did in the one you remember. She never forgot your childhood encounter, and when she had the opportunity, she crossed over again to find you, and seek refuge on that side. That is what put the two sides on a collision course originally. And caused Bell to make the Wave Sync Device... putting both universes on a path to eventual destruction."

Peter thought about that for a moment. "How many times have events been overwritten?"

September shook his head. "We do not know. The original timeline occurred... before our creation. Because it occurred before we existed, we cannot observe or interact with it. To do so would most likely result in our destruction."

"Certain events have an inertia about them. It is difficult to go back and change them. I had thought that by allowing the natural course of events that would result from my mistake - interrupting your father - to occur, namely, you drowning in the lake, that the timeline would rewrite itself again and continue on, breaking the cycle. But it turned out that even the rewritten timeline needed you for something."

Peter stared at the fire and thought for a long time.

"Etta." Peter said, "She has to be the reason I came back. She is unique, and I'm not just saying that because she's my daughter. She's the first trans-universe child, and she has Cortexiphan abilities – which will be passed to her children."

September nodded. "She is the progenitor of a new bloodline of humanity. Her children will all have Cortexiphan abilities, and be able to move between worlds without ill effect. Because the Cortexiphan exposure occurs in the womb, only her female descendants will pass their abilities down. Hopefully this...new addition will be enough to stop the cycle."

Peter swallowed. Suddenly his eyes hurt. He sighed and continued, gazing into the fire.

"My first child, Henry," he swallowed again, "... didn't have that uniqueness."

"No." September said quietly, "He would not have been... special enough to change the timeline. Perhaps Etta will."

Their conversation was interrupted by the Beacon arriving, not ten meters from where they were sitting. It burst up from the ground in a roar of sound and a blast of light, and lay on the edge of the small crater it had created. September crammed his s 'more into his mouth and walked over to where the chrome cylinder glowed and pulsed, followed by Peter.

"I cannot touch the Beacon," September reminded him. "You must be the one to disable it."

Peter nodded. "How do I do that?"

"The outer shell must be touched in a specific rhythm." September scribbled something quickly in his notebook, then tore the page out and handed it to Peter, who found to his surprise that it was a musical score. A long one, but not something that would be difficult for him to tap out on the shell of the Beacon.

Peter cracked his knuckles and began typing out the sequence; on the last tap, the Beacon split lengthwise, revealing it's glowing interior. And to Peter's surprise, it looked familiar.

"September?" he asked.

"We have mere minutes before it closes and moves on. I will answer your questions after you disable it." September said. "Do you see the chips that glow in the primary colors?"

Peter nodded.

"Remove the chips in this order: yellow, red, blue, then replace them in the Beacon in the opposite order, blue, then red, then yellow."

Peter did so, and the Beacon immediately powered down, its exterior lights died out and its hum dropped to a low drone.

"We need to leave," September said. "The Observers will come to investigate when it doesn't move from its last location."

"Why does The Beacon look like Bell's work?" Peter blurted out, unwilling to wait anymore for his answers. "I look at that thing and I understand how it works, because I've seen his designs. The shapeshifters, the Machine, the control matrix for Eunice - they all have elements in common."

"Because Doctor Bell designed it," September replied, apparently knowing that Peter would refuse to leave if he didn't answer some questions.

"A William Bell, or the William Bell back at the house?" Peter asked.

"The William Bell at the house is the Bell from... before. From a time that has since been overwritten. And he is the only one in existence, as far as I know. Because he's killed all the other ones. He has a... powerful survival instinct."

Peter and September stared at each other for a moment, then Peter stood and picked up The Beacon.

"Take us back," he ordered.

September touched his arm, and they were gone.


	11. Chapter 11

Olivia Dunham stared at the ceiling, hands clasped on her chest, unable to sleep.

One would think that six months or twenty years apart from Peter, depending on one's perspective, would have made it rather easy to sleep without him beside her. But she'd found that having had a little taste of her soulmate next to her again made her want him near her all the more.

So she simply lay awake in the creaky bed that wore his scent, and tried not to think about everything bad that could happen to him while he was time traveling with September. It certainly didn't help that watching him wink out with the Observer reminded her of what had happened when he'd emerged from the Machine years ago.

Sometimes having an eidetic memory, even one that had been written over, erased, and traced back in, was a curse.

Olivia was grateful when she heard the stairs creak and a tap on the door. She always preferred crisis management to brooding alone.

"Mom?" Etta asked through the closed door. "We have a situation downstairs."

Olivia got out of bed and slipped into a pair of jeans, sliding her pistol into the waistband out of habit. As was her preference, she'd been wearing one of Peter's tee shirts to bed. She opened the door to reveal her daughter, waiting patiently.

"Hi, mom," Etta said. "...before you ask, no Dad isn't back yet. Walter came up from the basement ranting about Bell, and wave sync devices, palimpsests, causality violations and a whole lot of other things that Simon and I don't understand. Help?"

Olivia tied her hair back as she followed Etta downstairs. "Where is Astrid?"

"She braved the depths of the basement," Etta said over her shoulder.

Olivia and Etta reached the living room, and encountered Walter attempting to frantically explain something to Simon.

"I'm trying to tell you, Bell isn't the man he claims to be..." Walter exclaimed.

"Do you think he's an imposter?" Simon asked.

"No! He's William Bell, but not the William Bell he's pretending to be," Walter gesticulated frantically.

Simon made an expansive gesture, arms widening, hands open and tone even, soothing. "You're making no sense to me, Doctor Bishop, please try to calm down."

"Try to keep up, boy," Walter replied, his anger rising. But then, Walter did something that actually made Olivia proud of him. He shook his head, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, making a valiant effort to calm himself.

"I suppose you could consider him an imposter," Walter said. "...he definitely isn't the Bell I shared the Harvard lab with years ago. He knows things our Bell couldn't possibly have knowledge of."

Presently, Astrid emerged from the basement. "Bell is down there, hogtied, with a big lump on his head."

In the midst of the commotion, Peter and September reappeared, bringing all conversation to a momentary halt. Peter lowered the burden he carried in his arms, the deactivated and split open Beacon, to the floor beside him.

"Peter..." Olivia said, as she stepped forward to embrace him.

He accepted the hug gratefully, but his face was tense with worry. "Where's Bell?"

Olivia blinked with surprise. Astrid tilted her head toward the basement. "He's tied up in the basement..."

"What did he do?" Peter interrupted, eyes flashing.

Under normal circumstances, Peter was always one step away from shooting Bell in the head. But now...Olivia feared he might actually do it. It was the tensed set of his shoulders and the ice cold expression on his face that alarmed her. He ran into the kitchen before she could stop him, and then everyone followed him and crowded down the stairs to the basement.

September probably saved Bell's life, by blinking out of the living room and reappearing in the basement one second later, between Peter and the bound, unconscious scientist.

As they gathered in a loose ring around the unconscious and bound form lying on the floor, Peter paced nervously back and forth, scratching at his stubble, blue eyes never leaving Bell.

"Dad?". Etta asked, "What happened? Why are you so upset?"

"He isn't the William Bell he pretends to be..." Walter interrupted, "Yes, son?"

Peter raised an eyebrow. "Yes. September told me while we were away. How did you figure it out?"

"He knew things he couldn't possibly have. About you, things he couldn't have known unless he was there."

Peter shook his head, agitated.

"That doesn't make any sense. The Bell from the overwritten timeline died after..."

He stole a glance at Olivia, who gave a little nod.

"Well, I guess we should just ask him. Walter, wake him up."

Walter nodded, then went to retrieve something from his medical kit. When he returned he crouched in front of Bell's unconscious form, and cracked open a capsule of smelling salts in front of his nostrils.

Bell jerked away from the acrid smelling substance, then looked up at the ring of faces surrounding him.

"Ah, the jig is up," he said. "...I had a pretty good run. Longer than I should have, in fact."

Bell struggled against his bonds - apparently, Walter had used whatever was at hand to tie him up, which included zip ties, coaxial cable and plastic wrap - and eventually managed to sit up.

"Really, this is a little much. Where would I go?" he pleaded. "Most of you are armed."

Everyone glanced at Peter, who looked at Simon.

"Cut him loose," he said, "...just don't let him near any bells."

Simon raised an eyebrow at the last, but produced a pocket knife and cut Bell free.

Bell nodded gratefully, then stood up - moving slowly, as he was aware of their jumpiness - and sat down in a chair at the nearest workbench.

"So what's your story?" Peter asked, "September and I had an interesting conversation about you."

Bell nodded. "Yes, I imagine you would have. The Observers in their various incarnations have been a problem for some time."

"Are you...the original William Bell, for lack of a better term?" Peter asked.

The others seemed fascinated by the turn of events, and content to let Peter continue the interrogation.

"Well, young Peter, I don't know that I'm the original William Bell, the concept itself is problematic. But I am the one that makes sure he continues to exist, no matter the circumstances."

"So what September said is true? You've murdered all the other William Bells?"

"They all had...conveniently fatal accidents. And I assure you, the process was quite Darwinian. Several of them attempted to do the same unto me. But the most fit survived."

"It sounds like you're all a bunch of dimension hopping, time traveling, psychopaths."

Bell shook his head.

"If I eliminate a few of my alternates, what does it matter in the scheme of things? They're all just...possibilities anyway. The end result of different chains of events. When my timeline became...inhospitable...I migrated to another. Once there, I realized that in order to remain there, I had to assume my alternates identity and I did."

"How many times?" Peter asked.

"Irrelevant. What you need to ask is why I've done all this."

"To save your wrinkly ass?" Etta interjected, her sarcastic tone so resembling her father's that everyone present smirked, including Bell.

"No, young lady. To pass information between timelines. To maintain continuity." Bell responded. "I was...the backup plan. Something we need to discuss, soon."

Peter rubbed his eyes tiredly and swayed on his feet a little. Alarmed, Olivia stepped forward and grabbed his arm. "Peter?"

He waved her off.

"I'm okay. I just realized I've been awake for eighteen hours with nothing but s'mores to eat."

Olivia took that as her cue to take charge.

"Well, we're not going to resolve this tonight anyways. We can't really leave Bell alone..."

"I will watch over Doctor Bell," volunteered September.

Olivia nodded gratefully.

"Thank you. Take him to his apartment over the garage, and be careful. Tomorrow, after breakfast, we'll have a meeting. We'll detail the plan for the device and figure out what to do with Bell. But for now, let's all get some sleep."

The group broke up. As the others ascended the stairs, Walter peered at Bell as if he were examining a specimen in a test tube.

"I never knew you at all, did I Belly?" he asked, before following the others up the stairs.

 

Olivia followed Peter upstairs, undressed and waited in bed for him while he washed up in the small bathroom across the hall and changed into a tee shirt and boxers.

After the meeting with Bell, he had retreated into the brooding silence she had started calling "running silent" years ago. It meant that he was thinking deeply about something that disturbed him, and she knew he wouldn't talk about what was bothering him - or much else - until he had sorted things out in his own mind.

Which could take anywhere from mere hours to a few days.

Before everything went to hell after the Purge, Peter could sometimes rid himself of a foul mood by spending an hour or so at the piano, either the one at the lab or the refurbished baby grand she bought him for their second anniversary.

She smiled, recalling the expression of shock and delight when he returned home to find an almost new piano in the living room. Then she wondered...the piano had been abandoned with the house in Brookline. It wouldn't be very useful to scavengers, and it was very heavy besides. Could it still be there?

Peter entered the room, scratching at his scruffy face, a sure sign that'd he shave in the morning. He sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh.

"So, you had your confrontation with Nina?" he asked.

This was new. He wanted to talk. She nodded. "Yeah."

"How did it go?"

Peter's expression told her he already knew, but had to ask. It was Olivia's turn to sigh.

"As well as we expected. She admitted to it all, so that's to her credit. I just...wonder when it'll stop. I don't like having been used, and I absolutely hate that Etta was, in our absence. But there's little we can do about it now."

"We can be there for Etta now," Peter said.

"Yes," she acknowledged.

Olivia sat up and wrapped her arms around Peter's waist from behind and laid her head on his shoulder.

"What about you?" she asked quietly, watching his face.

"The topic of Henry came up." he said simply, avoiding her eyes.

Ah ha, Olivia thought. That always puts him in a black mood.

"He was your son. It's natural for you to think about him. Doesn't matter that you never met him."

Olivia caressed his chest reassuringly. She'd made it clear that the topic of Etta's namesake didn't bother her, yet Peter was still reluctant to bring the subject up to her.

He swallowed.

"It's just the...injustice of it." he said, "...he isn't here now, because of choices I made. And honestly...if I had to do it all over again, I'd have to make those same choices again. Makes me wonder about my role in things, whether I have any choice at all."

Olivia laid her head on his shoulder again.

"I wouldn't want you any other way." she whispered into his ear. She reached up, scratched his too- scruffy cheek affectionately, turned his face toward hers and kissed him softly and affectionately, then broke away and looked into his eyes.

Peter turned toward her, slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her into a kiss that was a lot more than simple affection. A second later, Olivia responded, pressing herself against him, her hands roaming his body. When they broke apart this time, it took her a second to gain her breath.

"I thought you'd be too tired for this, tonight..." she teased.

Peter shrugged. "As long as you don't mind me falling asleep right after...I think it's a perfect way to end a long day."

"Just this once."

 

"I do want to thank you again, my dear, for indulging my scientific curiosity. Here, have a Red Vine!"

Walter held a paper bag of the candies out to his granddaughter, who smiled and politely accepted one. Each was fighting a bout of insomnia, and had gravitated together in the basement lab.

"What exactly are you attempting to find out?" she asked, after taking a bite.

Etta reclined in a chair next to a workbench in the basement. Two metal clamps were attached to her arm, which were attached to wires that lead to a device on the workbench that looked like an old fashioned ham radio.

"You are very special, Henrietta. You are the first child born of parents from different universes."

Walter scooted his chair closer to the workbench and started flipping switches and turning dials before he turned back to Etta and continued his explanation.

"Now an object or person from this universe resonates at a distinct frequency, a C note. Something or someone from the other universe, vibrates at a different frequency, a G. I am just curious as to what frequency you will resonate at. I assume you will vibrate at this universe's frequency, because you were born and raised here, but I am prepared to be surprised."

Walter stopped to finish his Red Vine before continuing. "You know, I attempted to do this very experiment before when you were very young. I think you were only two at the time, and your parents brought you to the lab for me to babysit. Your mother walked in on us...and assumed I was doing something rather more hazardous. I never got the chance again until now."

Etta smiled. "You're lucky she didn't set you on fire," she teased.

Walter nodded. "You have no idea..."

He turned to the device - which actually was a ham radio she had decided, it just accepted signals from the clamps attached to her arm, rather than an antenna - and turned it on. The basement filled with a tone from the speakers.

"Oh my," Walter said, "D sharp? Why a D sharp? That's magnificent!"

Walter steepled his fingers in front of his mouth, lost in thought.

"Uh, why?" asked Etta.

"Oh, well it's just unexpected. As I said, I would have imagined you would resonate at the same frequency as your mother...ah, I have it!"

Walter snapped his fingers and nodded.

"Your frequency is precisely between your mother's and your father's. It was set at the precise moment of your conception, when Peter's sperm united with Olivia's egg!"

 

After breakfast the following morning, they all gathered in the living room for the planned meeting. The group listened attentively while Walter described exactly what Eunice would do when activated.

"Eunice essentially creates a pocket universe by tearing a sphere of material out of this one. Anything within the area of effect would vanish in an instant, swept into a new universe. I'm not exactly sure what would happen to those trapped inside. The laws of physics might rewrite themselves in a random fashion. I suspect it would be quite hellish inside, for a few seconds anyway."

"What about the effects on this universe?" Simon asked. "It sounds like quite a weapon of mass destruction."

"Well, anything within the sphere will disappear, but the damage should not escalate beyond that. The real problem is, Eunice is under powered. With only five grams of antimatter available, the sphere is only one hundred meters in radius. We have to lure the Observers within that radius."

Astrid raised her hand. "Where are we going to...detonate it?"

Peter answered this question. "We think we'll use the Harvard lab. The university is abandoned, so there shouldn't be any civilian casualties. We just have to figure out a way to get the majority of Observers there."

Etta grew agitated, pacing behind the couch, her brow furrowed. She had the beginnings of a plan, but she knew that everyone in this room, save perhaps Bell and September, would object to it.

Oh well. She'd never been one to duck a good argument.

"I have an idea." Etta said. "Send me in... as a Trojan Horse. I can put thoughts in the Observers heads, and hide my own from them. We just need to figure out why they have to converge on the lab."

She grinned wolfishly as the firestorm started. The argument raged for several minutes, sweeping up everyone except September, Bell and surprisingly, Olivia. Her mother sat and stared at her, a disturbed expression on her face as she thought deeply.

Finally, Peter managed to shout down everyone else. "All right, Bishop family meeting in the backyard! Everyone else, chill for a little bit."

In the months they'd occupied the house, Astrid had turned the backyard into a small flower garden. She spent her free time indulging herself in her new hobby, painting flowers.

"You're a Bishop too, Walter," Peter said to his father in passing, and Walter followed them out.

Simon followed the group outside and stood at Etta's side, earning himself a baleful glare from Peter.

"You think you're family, now?" he sneered.

Simon remained standing, facing off with Peter, until Etta stepped next to him and linked her arm in his.

"He stays." she said quietly.

Peter sighed, and gave a frustrated wave of his hand. "He stays."

"I don't want you to do this, Etta," Peter started. "...you're just learning to use your abilities, and it's far too dangerous..."

"Aren't you being a little hypocritical, Dad?" Etta interrupted, "From what Walter tells me, you stepped into the Machine twenty years ago, fairly certain you were going to die. I'm just following your example."

"Princess, the situations are entirely different. For one thing, if you don't do this, the world isn't going to end... I didn't really have a choice."

"Peter, calm down," Olivia interrupted. "...I think it's a good plan. And face it Peter, she has a point. Either of us would do this if we were capable. And... she's not four years old. She can make her own decisions."

Peter turned and looked at her, and Etta watched the most fascinating silent battle of wills she'd ever seen. Eventually, Peter forced his blue eyes away from her green, and seemed to deflate.

"We have Broyles on the inside, he can help her if anything goes wrong." Olivia said. "...we've left him unused, just for this sort of situation."

Peter looked to Walter, quietly sitting in his armchair, for support. "You can't be going along with this!"

"Actually..." Walter murmured "It's a good idea. We certainly need to work out the details, but Henrietta is uniquely suited for just this sort of task. In fact, she's really the only one who could do it."

Peter sighed and sat down on a lawn chair, shoulders slumped.

"Simon?" Olivia asked, "Do you have anything to say?"

"I'm with Peter," Simon said. "...I think it's far too dangerous. But it's not like she'll listen to me, so it really is up to Etta."

Etta smiled at him. "I guess it's decided then. We can work out the details later today."

She stepped forward and bent down to kiss Peter's cheek, earning herself a lopsided grin. Then she hugged Olivia, grabbed Simon's sleeve, and tugged him to follow her into the house.

Olivia's eyes followed Simon and Etta as they left the garden. When they were out of earshot, she sat down beside Peter.

"Are those two...together?" she asked.

Peter smiled. "They're at the stage you and I were about a year after we met."

Olivia raised an eyebrow and snorted. "You mean they have feelings for each other, but both are afraid to talk about it? Oh, that sucked. And got us into a lot of trouble..."

Walter sighed. "I wish I could remember what you two are talking about."

 

September followed William Bell up a flight of stairs into the apartment built over the garage. The resemblance to the lab in the basement was striking, revealing that Bell and the elder Bishop tended to work in a similar matter.

"Doctor Bell...how did you travel through spacetime?" September asked.

Bell stared at him for a long time, then glanced at the white board in a corner. He walked over to it and began drawing with an orange marker. September stared at the design taking shape on the whiteboard, and soon found he was unable to look away, move or make a sound.

"I had help from an Observer, of course," he said, "You people should really put some sort of filter on your visual cortex. It's far too easy to use memetic weapons on you. What do you think of my paralysis rune?"

Bell turned and stared at the motionless figure of September. As if on cue, another Observer phased through the roof. The new Observer wore the typical grey suit and fedora, but was particularly tall and thin, well over six feet in height, had an eyepatch covering his left eye, and wore a spectacularly garish – for an Observer, at least – purple and pink paisley tie.

"April," Bell greeted him.

"Doctor Bell," replied April.

April looked with interest at the frozen in place figure of September, as Bell continued speaking. "...Or could it just be you, September? April here, would never look at a rune I had drawn..."

Bell stopped and glared at the new visitor. April had turned his gaze from September to the whiteboard, and was now frozen in place.

"Damn it," Bell muttered.


	12. Chapter 12

Simon whistled loudly up the stairs to the apartment over the garage, where William Bell slept.

"Bell, uh, September? Time for breakfast." he called.

He waited for several minutes, but when he got no response, he walked up the stairs and knocked on the door. After another minute of no acknowledgement, he drew his pistol, took a deep breath and entered the small apartment, weapon ready.

He found September standing completely still, staring at a strange symbol written in orange ink on a whiteboard, and no sign of Bell. When Simon looked at the symbol, it swam in his vision, and made the room spin around him, as if he'd spent the night doing shots of tequila. He instinctively averted his eyes, and immediately felt better.

Simon examined the Observer. He appeared to be alive - at least he was still breathing - but he stood motionless, transfixed by the design displayed on the whiteboard. At least it seemed that way. When he passed his hand in front of Septembers eyes, the Observer remained spellbound.

Simon sighed, and went downstairs to find Peter. It was always something, with this bunch.

 

Captain Windmark swooped into Broyles office, uninvited as usual, and placed a silvery, cylindrical device, about half a meter tall, on his desk. He then removed the fedora from his head and glared down at him.

"This was found in the Charles River yesterday," Windmark said, as if Broyles was going to know what that meant.

"There's a lot of trash in the river these days," Broyles replied, not bothering to look up from the requisition form he was filling out.

He checked his watch, was surprised that it was almost noon. He wondered if losing track of time was a symptom of old age, or too many painkillers.

"It was detected because it was giving off gamma rays at a precise energy of 511 kilo-electron volts," Windmark said, watching Broyles' face.

Broyles looked up. "I'm not a physicist, Windmark. What does that mean?"

"That is the energy given off by a particle of anti-matter annihilating a particle of normal matter. The device is an anti-matter bomb."

Broyles glared back. "And you brought it in here? Are you insane?"

Windmark nodded and produced an antique pocket watch from under his coat. "The device should be inert...as of five minutes ago. It was damaged, and slowly venting anti-matter to prevent an unplanned detonation. Besides, you already have cancer, the radiation would not harm you, Phillip."

"Well, my people out there," Broyles gestured toward the silent squad room, "...don't, so it may harm them."

The two of them glared at each other over Broyles' desk for a full minute.

Broyles shook his head and sighed. "You thought that I had something to do with this, and that I'd reveal myself if you confronted me with it. Why don't you just scan me, if you think I've betrayed you?"

Windmark placed his hat back on his bald pate. "Doing so would most likely kill you, in your condition. I didn't want the responsibility for that."

Windmark left, leaving the anti-matter device on Broyles desk. He grunted and stood up, all the while holding his side, then tossed the useless thing in the trash. As he returned to his desk, his phone chirped, the distinctive tone he'd assigned for a message from Nina Sharp. That was curious; their weekly date wasn't for another two days, and they rarely talked outside of that.

Phillip pulled out his phone and looked at the message on the display.

Nina: You're going to have a special guest very soon. You'll know who it is when you see her.

 

"Don't stare at the rune," Walter warned, as he took September's blood pressure, "I'm not sure what the effect would be on one of us. It may induce a seizure."

Save for Astrid, they had all gathered in the small, cluttered apartment after Simon had come downstairs and interrupted breakfast with news of September's paralyzed state and Bell's disappearance.

The smell of the pancakes Astrid was cooking downstairs wafted up into the apartment, causing a few stomachs to complain loudly.

"Can't we just knock him down, or erase the board?" asked Etta. Ignoring her grandfather's advice, she was staring at the symbol on the whiteboard, fascinated.

"As a last resort, we will do one of those, but I'm afraid it would harm him. In addition, we have an opportunity to learn something valuable. Peter, could you take a picture of the rune?"

Peter nodded, produced his phone, and snapped several pictures of the whiteboard from different angles, as Walter continued his commentary.

"Observers have technological implants distributed throughout their bodies. It's how they do what they do. The runes..."

Walter stopped fussing over the frozen September, produced a Red Vine from his pocket, and gestured toward the whiteboard.

"...are control codes. They override voluntary control over certain bodily systems."

"In other words, they hack the Observers' nervous system," said Peter.

Walter nodded and enthusiastically took a bite of his licorice. "That's a crude way to put it, but essentially correct,"

Olivia stepped up beside her daughter, concern on her face.

"Etta you should stop looking at..." then stopped mid sentence. She had gotten a glimpse of the rune at the corner of her vision. It pulsed and writhed at the corner of her perception, and she suddenly felt nauseated.

"Oh, I don't feel so good," Olivia said.

"Mom?" Etta stopped looking at the symbol and grabbed Olivia's elbow.

"I'll be fine," Olivia objected, as everyone in the room, save September, looked at her with concern. "...I just need some fresh air."

"I told you people not to look at it," Walter said. "Henrietta, could you take your mother downstairs?"

"Damn it!" Olivia objected, "I'm fine..."

"We know you are," Peter said, "...but you haven't eaten anything today."

An odd look passed between husband and wife, as if they were communicating without speaking. Olivia rolled her eyes, nodded and accepted Etta's help as she turned toward the stairs, giving Peter a we'll talk about this later glare.

Simon gestured toward the rune, while keeping his eyes averted.

"So...these runes are like a computer virus to Observers...is there any way we can use them to our advantage?" he asked.

"Exactly what I was thinking, young man." Walter replied, taking another bite of his Red Vine.

 

Upon smelling the abandoned pancake breakfast in the kitchen, Olivia turned green and bolted for the bathroom.

Startled, Astrid and Etta looked at each as Olivia slammed the door behind her and started retching.

"I'm sure it's not your pancakes, Aunt Astrid..." Etta said, embarrassed for both of them.

"Go tend to your mother. Let me know if you need anything," Astrid said, and returned to the kitchen.

"Mom, are you okay?" Etta asked from outside the closed door.

She heard a muffled, and unconvincing, "Yes, honey!" followed by more retching noises.

"I'm coming in..." Etta insisted, and opened the door.

She found Olivia crouched over the toilet, her face sweaty and pale. As Etta stroked her mother's back soothingly, unsure of what else to do, Olivia vomited once more, then seemed to recover somewhat. She flushed the toilet and sat down on the tile floor.

Etta dampened a washcloth, crouched beside Olivia and applied it to her forehead, getting a wan smile in response.

"I never got sick when I was pregnant with you." she said, and it took a moment for that to sink past Etta's concern for her mother.

"Mom, you...you're pregnant?" Etta gasped.

Olivia clasped Etta's hand and squeezed it, smiling broadly.

"I think so. Missed my period. Peter and I have been trying since we reunited."

"Is this a good thing? I mean, the timing isn't exactly the best..."

Olivia laughed heartily at that, then squeezed Etta's hand affectionately. "Someday soon I'll tell you about the circumstances around your conception. At least I'm not jumping out of a helicopter this time."

Etta smiled, and mother and daughter shared a tight embrace, then Etta simply stared, a silly grin on her face.

"What?" Olivia asked.

"Grandad was right about you two. You have been hiding the Bishop every night."

Etta grinned at her mother's horrified look.

"A euphemism and a pun in the same sentence? Oh, you wicked child!" gasped Olivia.

Then the two of them burst into laughter.

 

"..the time at the warehouse, I just had to scrape the rune off the floor and he could move again right away," Peter said, "...I think it's the simplest thing to do. Just throw a towel over the whiteboard and see what happens."

Walter nodded as he listened, scratching his chin. "I suppose you're right. Well... throw a towel over the whiteboard."

Peter draped a white bath towel he had previously collected from the bathroom over the whiteboard, obscuring the rune. Immediately, September shuddered, and looked around, confused.

"Where is Doctor Bell?" he asked.

"Just what we wanted to ask you," Peter said, "Are you okay?"

"I am...unharmed." September said.

Walter stepped forward and put his hand on the Observer's shoulder. "It's good to have you back, friend. What is the last thing you remember?"

"I remember asking Doctor Bell how he traveled through spacetime. He said that he had aid from another Observer. Before I could ask for more details, he drew the rune, and I don't recall anything after that."

Simon put his hand on his gun. "Aid from an Observer? That's... so not good."

Walter nodded. "We have to put our plan in action now. Peter and I will go to the basement and start disassembling Eunice. You take Etta and make the call to Fringe Division."

"I will attempt to locate Doctor Bell." said September, and disappeared.

Olivia and Astrid packed parts of Eunice as fast as Walter and Peter could disassemble them. In the space of an hour, the device they had spent months creating was taken down into its component parts and placed into four backpacks, ready for transport to the Harvard lab.

That task done, they gathered contingency items – a small amount of supplies and weapons.

"Can I have one of the pistols?" Walter asked quietly.

Peter gave his father a dubious look, but waited for him to make his case.

"You trust me with anti-matter. I can do far less harm with a firearm." Walter said.

Peter, Olivia, and Astrid looked at one another.

"He has a point," Olivia said.

Astrid shrugged.

Peter nodded, and handed one of the hyper-v pistols to Walter, who accepted it with both hands, as if it were fragile.

"I'll let you know when to start shooting," Peter said, "...and I hope to God, it doesn't come to that."

"Amen." said Walter, putting the pistol into the pocket of his coat.

They shouldered their packs, ascended the stairs, walked through the quiet house – Simon and Etta had already left to do their part – and out the door.

Olivia sighed and looked at Peter. "We didn't even have a real goodbye with her."

His reply was somehow both cynical and optimistic in tone.

"That's appropriate, don't you think? We'll see her again. I know it."

Olivia sighed, and led the way out the door, toward the former campus of Harvard University.

 

Simon frowned and shook his head, glaring at Etta.

"This is the craziest thing I've seen you do, and that's saying something. You should at least let me go in with you."

The two of them stood before a public communications terminal in downtown Boston, Etta in front of the screen, Simon leaning with his back against the side of the device, out of sight of the video camera.

Etta smiled and closed out the call to Fringe Division headquarters. She had just turned herself in for questioning, setting in motion the plan they'd cooked up over the last nine months.

"No. You'd be read and blow my cover. We have Broyles on the inside if I need anything. But... you're cute when you're protective."

"Etta..." Simon started to say something, but was interrupted by Etta stepping close and pulling his face down to hers for a more-than-friendly kiss.

"Always wanted to do that," she explained, "...now go. They'll be here to pick me up in ten minutes, and we don't want you caught, too."

She slapped his ass to send him on his way.

 

Bell and April appeared in an overgrown compound in a humid rainforest, somewhen in the past. The compound was constructed mostly of roughly hewn logs, and resembled an Indian War era fort. The structure was surrounded on all sides, and even overhead, by a vast canopy of tall trees, their foliage giving the bright midday sun a greenish cast.

Peering around, Bell frowned. "Not the most scenic place to make our escape, but I suppose it will have to do. I am at your mercy, so to speak."

April walked off toward a nearby log cabin. Startled, Bell followed him. Inside, they found a multitude of crates, stacked from floor to ceiling.

April remained silent. He removed a device from one pocket, and a small notebook from another, and transcribed a long series of symbols with an expensive looking pen. Bell became worried. He recognized the device as one that essentially gave your coordinates in space and time.

"Oh, come on! You can't still be angry about the paralysis rune."

April turned to him and looked him up and down, then replaced his notebook in his pocket. When he spoke, it was in a clipped monotone, but somehow Bell got the impression that the tall, thin Observer was angry with him.

"This was the compound used by the Fringe division to hide the pieces of the Machine in the distant past. It is far enough, in spacetime terms, that the Observers will not look for you here. There is no technology to speak of, but there are adequate supplies for several years. There are no dangerous lifeforms nearby."

Bell grew alarmed. "April, what are you doing? We have so much left to do!"

The Observer stared at him. "You are too much of a wild variable, William. Time and again, I have warned you of the dangers of trafficking in technology between timelines. You have always disregarded my warnings and caused many, many disastrous ripples further up the time stream. It will end now."

Bell's face twisted, he seized the Observer by his lapels and futilely attempted to pull the bald man's face down to his. April stared impassively down at him, from his full height.

"You can't leave me here!" Bell yelled, "...you owe me! Your life!"

"Yes. That is why I have not killed you. I will check on you periodically."

The Observer disappeared, leaving Bell standing alone in the compound.

"He did it. I can't believe he finally did it," Bell muttered to himself.

More annoyed than concerned, Bell began examining the contents of the crates that filled the cabin he was in, looking for anything useful. By grace of his intelligence and cunning, he had made it through situations worse than this one. He was nothing if not a survivor.

 

Etta Bishop strode through the headquarters of Fringe Division, head held high, escorted by a squad of agents, fully aware of the stares of her former co-workers. A few agents nodded at her politely and she nodded back, others averted their gaze, getting a grin they could feel through the backs of their heads in return.

The agents left her in a small interrogation room. Four bare walls, a table and two chairs, and of course, the unseen surveillance system. She waited patiently, hands folded in her lap. A half hour later, she heard somebody cycle the electronic latch on the heavy metal door, and her former boss entered.

"Where is your partner, Simon Foster?" Broyles asked, as he towered over her..

Etta gave him an odd expression, something between a smile and a smirk, as Broyles took a seat across from her.

What Etta said, for the benefit of the various recording devices she knew to be in the room, was "How could I possibly know that? He's long gone by now."

But of course, cameras and microphones don't record everything.

General Broyles? she thought across the table at him, Can you hear me? Scratch your left cheek if you can.

Broyles eyebrows shot up, and he raised a hand to scratch at his left cheek. He stared into her eyes intently.

Don't bother, she thought back, I'm a transmitter, not a receiver. And I have something to confess. My name isn't Etta Blake, it's Henrietta Bishop. I'm Peter and Olivia's daughter.

Broyles eyebrows shot for the ceiling, but he recovered well, his face resuming it's stony visage.

I need you – we need you - to do something, sir. I need you to get me in the same room with your boss, Captain Windmark. It's very important that he read me. Don't worry, he'll only see what I want him to.

Hours later, Etta shifted uncomfortably in her seat, and in a mild concession to boredom, drummed her fingers on the white plastic table in front of her. She'd been lost in her thoughts for uncounted hours; by design, there was no means for those in an interrogation room to know how much time had passed – no clocks, no natural light.

Finally, she heard the lock on the door cycle. She took a deep breath, fighting to keep her excitement from overwhelming her.

 

Captain Windmark, the tall, pallid Observer leader glided into the room and doffed his fedora. He gazed down at her for a long moment before speaking.

"Hello, Agent Blake. Phillip told me you have information that would be of use to me in my investigations. I have little time to spare, so I think I will simply Read you. This will not hurt...unless you struggle."


	13. Chapter 13

Broyles stared through the one-way glass into the interrogation room at the standing figure of Captain Windmark, and the seated form of Etta Bishop. The two of them had been staring at one another for – Broyles looked at his watch - eight minutes now.

Upon entering, Windmark had stated his intent to scan Etta's mind. Normally, that would result in a normal human convulsing and drooling on the floor in thirty seconds, at the most. Broyles had been prepared to go in and blow the Observer's head off, damn the consequences, despite Etta's assurances that this was exactly what she wanted.

But the two merely stared at each other. Neither appeared to be in any pain. Broyles glanced at his watch again.

Ten minutes.

 

The four members of the original Fringe team reached what remained of the Kresge building on the campus of Harvard University almost an hour after they'd left the house.

Dressed as they were in ragged but warm clothing, sweaters and blue jeans, with bulky packs carrying the pieces of the device, Peter, Olivia, Walter, and Astrid looked like a quartet of scavengers combing the ruins of the old city, a not uncommon sight these days, and no one paid them any mind.

Peter turned a wary eye to the metal ladder attached to the side of the building. After decades of neglect – that honestly had started years before the Observers came - it was thoroughly rusted, and creaked loudly when he gave it a hard tug.

"What do you think?" Astrid asked, eying the structure skeptically. "Is it safe?"

Peter shook his head. "I wouldn't trust it. Not with all the extra weight we're carrying. We'll just have to go inside the building, and use the stairs."

"Could we make a detour through the lab?" Walter asked, voice tense. "I think I...left some things there."

"We don't have much time, you'll have to hurry," Peter replied.

Upon entering the still half-ambered lab, all of them except Walter stopped and stared at the remains of the place they had lived in or worked together for so long. Light filtering through ambered windows cast the lab in an eerie yellow hue, making the accumulated dust look like granules of alien pollen.

The spell was broken by Astrid's sneezing fit.

"Sorry," she said, "allergies!"

Walter took no notice, making a beeline for the chamber he'd used as a bedroom for almost a decade. The others split up, wandering around aimlessly.

Olivia went to the small room that she had once used for an office. At least a quarter inch of dust covered the paperwork left unfinished from two decades ago. She grinned, resisting the urge to sit down and finish filling out her last Officer Involved Shooting report for Broyles.

Then her gaze fell on a photo frame on the desk, and her smile disappeared. She reluctantly stepped closer, reached out and turned the frame to face her, then wiped the dust away with the palm of her hand.

The stoic visage of Agent Charlie Francis, his hand on the shoulder of a much younger and more innocent Olivia Dunham, looked at her. It had been taken at the Federal Building downtown, the day Olivia had been promoted to full agent.

She hadn't thought of Charlie for years, and that fact caused a sharp pain in her chest. Charlie deserved better than he'd gotten. But then, didn't everybody?

"Take it." Peter said from the doorway, "Astrid and I are each taking a souvenir. He was your best friend for so long, you deserve a memento, and he deserves to be remembered."

Olivia shook her head. "I doubt it'll survive the next few hours."

Peter grinned, and produced a roll of duct tape from his pack. He gingerly removed the picture from the frame, then sandwiched it between two yellow legal pads and wrapped the whole bundle in several layers of tape.

"There, that should survive anything.", he said, stowing it in her pack.

Olivia smiled at Peter's kindness, stepped close and gave him an appreciative kiss. Then they walked across the lab, hand in hand, and joined Astrid and Walter in Walter's bedroom.

Walter had a dozen dust covered cardboard boxes strewn across his dust covered bed, and was searching through them frantically. Peter looked at Astrid, silently asking what he was looking for. Astrid shrugged.

"Walter, we don't know how much time we have," said Peter.

"I had a photo album," Walter explained unbidden, "...pictures of Elizabeth, Peter and I...from before my folly began."

Walter tensed, as if realizing he'd said something offensive. He turned to Peter.

"My Peter, the other Peter...he deserves to be remembered." Walter said, picking his words carefully, "Not that I don't treasure you, but..."

"I understand, and he does. I'll help you find it, but we have to hurry," Peter said, starting to inspect the contents of a nearby box.

Astrid and Olivia moved to help, and a pile of things that were not the album in question formed next to the bed. After a few minutes Astrid pulled a small album out of a box she was picking through, and quickly flipped through the pictures inside.

"I think this is it, Walter," she said. She handed the album to him, and Walter flipped through the pages somberly. Finally, he nodded.

"Yes, this is it. Thank you. Now let's get to the roof!"

 

September was casually strolling down a busy street in Cambridge when April phased through the wall next to him and began striding alongside him, matching him step for step.

September reached into his pocket and removed a s'more wrapped in wax paper – he had begun keeping several on hand, for emergencies – then unwrapped and consumed it, as April waited for some acknowledgement. Finally, September licked his fingers.

"April," he said.

"September, we need to discuss our primary subjects of observation," April said.

September tilted his head.

"The Bishop and Dunham genetic lines have merged. It was done with some difficulty, and required innovation on my part, but my task is done."

April nodded.

"Yes, that is why I have decided to seek your advice. Bell has not reproduced except through cloning, which is of course useless for our purpose. In addition...he has become fixated on his continued survival, to the extent that he has used Soul Magnets on his clones. When Bell Prime dies, he will transmigrate to the nearest clone."

September cocked his head and offered a s'more to his companion, who accepted the treat and then stared at it as they walked. The few people on the street gave them a wide berth.

"Has it occurred to you, that as the only surviving members of the Science Team, we have no one to report to?"

If April had eyebrows, they would have shot for the stratosphere. Clearly, it had not occurred to the tall Observer.

"We owe the others no allegiance," concluded September.

Surprised by this assertion, April struggled to put his desires into words.

"I want to finish my task, as you did yours," he finally pled his case.

September nodded.

"These problems are not impossible. I will aid you."

The two Observers disappeared.

 

Twenty minutes later, on the roof of the Kresge building, Walter and Peter were using the contents of the packs to reassemble Eunice, while Astrid and Olivia were gazing out over the city, with little to do.

"This seems familiar," said Astrid, joining Olivia in looking at the expanse of the Charles River.

"Sitting around twiddling our thumbs while the boys tinker? It's happened," Olivia replied with a smile.

"Have you told Peter?" Astrid asked, dropping her voice a little.

Olivia shook her head. "Not yet."

Seeing Astrid's disapproving look, she explained.

"There's a decent chance we'll all be killed, as usual, in which case it wouldn't matter...I want to make telling him special somehow, this time. And you know he'll get overprotective again."

Astrid gazed toward the river for a minute, long enough for Olivia to think she had dropped the subject.

"Don't you think Peter has a right to be protective? I mean, you are kind of brash, and he has to deal with that all the time, not just when you're preggers."

"Of course he does! It's just...hey, which side are you on here?"

Astrid grinned.

"I'm on my new godchild's side," she said.

 

Suddenly, Captain Windmark pulled a device from his trench coat pocket, which resembled what a 1950's era engineer would imagine a cell phone would look like. He flipped the communications device open and spoke so rapidly, and at such a high pitch that Broyles couldn't understand what was said. Then just as quickly, he closed the phone and placed it back in his pocket, and gave a small nod across the table to Etta.

"Agent Blake, you've done us a great service by coming forward with this information. Trust me, it will not be forgotten. Now, I am afraid I must take my leave of you."

Windmark nodded through the window at Broyles. "Phillip." And then the Observer disappeared.

In the interrogation room, Etta paled, exhaled loudly and lowered her face to the table, covering her head with her hands. Broyles hurriedly filled a plastic cup with water from the nearby fountain and entered the interrogation room.

"Are you all right?" he asked, putting the cup of water on the table in front of the young woman. He pulled another chair up to the table and sat down, putting a soothing hand on her shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm fine, boss. Just having my first migraine," Etta replied. She raised her head a little, reached out slowly, as if moving took great effort, and took a sip of water.

"Your mother used to have them." Broyles said. Then, "What did you do?"

Etta turned her head, then looked up at him while leaving her head on the table. "What did you see?"

"You and Windmark stared at each other for about fifteen minutes. Then he just left."

Etta nodded, then winced at the throbbing the motion started in her head.

"I'm the...opposite of a mind reader. It's how the Cortexiphan gifted me. I can put thoughts, pictures...and beliefs in people's heads. Windmark...thinks we're opening a gate to an alternate universe, to let the lions and tigers and bears in."

Broyles nodded. "Where are they supposedly opening this gateway?"

"The Kresge building, in the old lab. Windmark also believes he has to gather as many Observers as possible in that building, to repel the invasion. But Walter has a nasty surprise for them."

Broyles nodded again. He fished in his pocket, produced a bottle of pills. He opened it, and shook one tablet out on the table in front of Etta.

"What's that?" she asked.

"Morphine. It makes my cancer almost bearable. I imagine it will help the migraine."

"Wooo, drugs," Etta said. "Walter would be soooo proud of me."

She sounded so much like Peter Bishop, Broyles wondered how he'd never seen the resemblance. Then he wondered if her Cortexiphan ability had something to do with it, but he didn't voice his suspicion.

Etta popped the tablet into her mouth, and swallowed it with the rest of the water. Then she turned serious. "Can I get out of here?"

Broyles shrugged.

"Like I can stop you?" he replied.

 

"Thank you for helping earlier, Peter." Walter said, his hands deep inside Eunice's electronic guts, "I know it would have been more logical to come to the roof immediately, than to stop and look for mementos."

Working across from him, Peter smiled. "Oh, that was nothing, Walter...believe me, I understand wanting to remember lost loved ones. I have...a lot of people I've found and lost and found again… and had nothing but my memories."

"Sometimes I wonder why you put up with me." Walter said, "Especially these past few months. It couldn't have been easy. I know I've been difficult. But knowing and doing something about it are different things."

Peter continued working silently, knowing Walter would continue with whatever he had to say once he gathered his thoughts.

"I tried to distance myself from you emotionally, thinking it would lead to more rational decisions on my part."

Walter shook his head, then jerked his hand out of the device with a wince, as he received a small jolt of electricity.

"All I succeeded in doing was adding to everyone's misery. I apologize, son."

Peter smiled as he closed a panel, then wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Thanks Dad," he said, bringing a smile to Walter's face.

 

Etta found Simon waiting for her at the place they'd agreed, the bench in the park by the river. A charming smile brightened his face when he saw her, but this changed when he realized from her pallor and labored movements that she wasn't in the best of health.

"You look ill..." he said, as he took her arm and helped her to sit on the bench.

"Yeah? Turns out, reprogramming somebody's brain takes a little effort. I have a bad headache, and I think I could sleep for a week."

Simon pulled a bottle of water from inside his jacket and handed it to her. She sipped gratefully as he looked through a small pair of binoculars and peered towards the campus of Harvard University.

"I can see them on the roof." he reported, "Peter and Doctor Bishop are assembling the device, while Astrid and your mum cool their heels."

Etta chuckled at the difference between the male and female halves of the original Fringe team. Simon smiled.

"You know, if we succeed today, it changes everything." Simon said, "...we're going to have to rebuild a society without the Observers telling us what to do."

"Isn't that what you wanted?" Etta asked.

Simon nodded.

"Of course. But just because the Observers are gone doesn't mean everything is moonbeams and rainbows. What are we going to do with the Loyalists?"

Etta shook her head and winced at the firecrackers that went off inside her skull.

"I don't care about any of that. I have my family back, that's all that matters."

Simon chuckled.

"You sound just like Peter when you say things like that."

"Everybody says that..." Etta muttered.

Simon put the binoculars to his eyes again to peer at the Kresge building. "Uh oh."

"What?" Etta asked.

"Observers."

 

Walter and Peter had just finished assembling Eunice when they heard Astrid gasp.

"Guys, we have company." she said.

Olivia looked over the ledge. A ring of Observers, at least a hundred of them, had appeared on the ground below, surrounding the Kresge building. Almost in unison, they drew old fashioned looking pistols from beneath their jackets, and began marching on the building. Then, another ring of Observers appeared...

Peter's hand appeared on her shoulder, and she glanced up at him. She covered his hand with hers and they twined their fingers together. Walter appeared at Peter's side and joined them in gazing down on the Observers. Presently, a third ring of suited men appeared and followed the previous two toward the building.

"Oh dear," Walter said, "it appears Henrietta's timing was just a little off."


	14. Chapter 14

"We have to do something," Etta said, standing up and taking her place at Simon's side. She fingered the bullet charm that still hung around her neck, something Simon hadn't seen her do since her reunion with her parents.

"I don't know what," Simon replied, peering through the binoculars, "I'm guessing there are a couple hundred, maybe a thousand Observer's going into the building. All we can do is hope they have the time to complete the device and activate it."

"And vanish into another universe?" Etta exclaimed, "Not acceptable! I just got my family back..."

She turned to Simon, and held her hand out. "Gun!"

Simon looked into her face. The change, in just a few hours was remarkable. Etta was pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and she looked thinner somehow. Yet he still saw the familiar fire behind her blue eyes.

"Etta, just what do you think you're going to do?" Simon asked.

Etta glared at him, and Simon finally relented, putting his hyper-V pistol and his spare magazine into her hands. Etta tucked the pistol into the waistband of her jeans and put the extra ammo into her jacket pocket. Then she spun on her heels and started walking toward the Kresge building, just a little unsteadily.

"Well, shit!" muttered Simon.

Then he followed Etta. It wasn't as if he had any choice in the matter.

 

Olivia stared over the edge of the roof as another ring of Observers materialized, drew pistols and marched toward the building.

"Peter...I have something to tell you. I wanted to wait until after all of this was over, to make it a special moment, but..."

"You're pregnant." Peter said, without looking up from the adjustments he was making to Eunice.

Walter looked up from what he was doing opposite Peter. "Pregnant! Wonderful. Assuming we survive our current situation, that is..."

Startled, Olivia looked over at Peter. Then she understood. "Etta told you?"

Peter shrugged.

"She's my princess," was his only explanation.

Olivia growled. "Daddy's girl, is what she is. I hope I get a boy to corrupt, this time."

Peter gave her his most annoying smirk, then closed and locked the panel where he'd been working.

"Peter," asked Walter, "Do you think ten minutes will be long enough?"

Peter shrugged again.

"Who the hell knows Walter? We want to get as many Baldies as possible within range – they're obliging us there, thanks to Etta – but we need some time to escape ourselves. I...guess ten minutes is enough."

"Peter, how are we going to..." Olivia started to say, but was interrupted by the door to the stairwell opening. Astrid and Olivia both drew their hyper-V pistols and fired. Unable to parry or dodge the high velocity bullets, the startled Observer was killed.

"I guess girl time was worth it," Astrid said, keeping her pistol trained on the stairwell.

Olivia kept her own pistol trained on the stairwell, as she moved to the opposite side of the roof from Astrid, so they would have unobstructed shots from two different angles.

"As I was saying," Olivia continued, raising her voice so everyone on the roof could hear her, "How are we going to get off the roof?"

Peter stood up and walked over to the rusty, ancient ladder attached to the side of the building, and thunked it with his hand a few times. Then he frowned downward as another ring of Observers appeared and converged on the building.

"You said that wouldn't hold," Astrid said.

"We aren't carrying Eunice this time. And what other choice do we have?"

 

The Observer designated April appeared in the center of the compound at noon and looked around. In the time since he'd left William Bell here, some changes had been made. A windmill, constructed from timbers hewn from the forest that surrounded the small fort had risen, and was supplying a rudimentary sort of mechanical power. A nearby shed had been converted into a smokehouse, with racks of cleaned fish inside. A small garden had been started, irrigated with water diverted from the nearby stream.

None of this was unexpected. In fact, he had counted on Bell's ingenuity to ensure his survival, and also keep him out of trouble for a time.

A noise from a nearby shack caused the tall, pallid Observer to turn his head. He walked over to the small structure and looked at the door with trepidation. Finally, he grasped the wooden handle, turned it and walked inside.

"Ha ha! I knew that would work! You folks are so predictable." William Bell sneered from his seat by the fire. Bell was dressed in crudely sewn skins and now sported a scraggly grey beard.

April slowly turned his one-eyed gaze down to his feet. He stood in the center of a Stasis Rune, drawn in the sand in colored dye. He turned his glare upon the gloating scientist.

"Unfortunately for you, we took your advice." April said, with not a hint of emotion.

"We?" asked Bell, puzzled.

April nodded, and stepped out of the Stasis Rune, showing no difficulty at all. He moved aside, as September appeared in the doorway, and stepped through. The Rune gave him no difficulty, either.

September acknowledged April with a slight nod, who continued his explanation.

"With the implant in our left eye removed, we are no longer constrained from original thought, or invention. We devised a filter for our visual cortex. Runes will no longer have an effect on us."

Bell sighed, and slumped in his chair. He looked up when September spoke.

"Doctor Bell, we need to know where and when your clones are. We need to...collect them before they can do more harm to the multiversal timescape."

Bell shook his head. "No. They are my legacy. And who are you to decide what's right for the space-time continuum anyways?"

September nodded. "April said this would be your reaction. Understand...we will find them all. It will simply take more effort this way."

Then the two Observers disappeared, leaving Bell alone in the compound.

 

"So, do you have some sort of plan, or are we just winging it?" Simon asked.

Etta and Simon lay concealed on the far side of a pile of rubble, approximately seventy yards from the hulk of the Kresge building. Etta was lying prone, head and shoulders on the top of the berm, gazing through Simon's confiscated binoculars.

"Winging it," Etta said. "We need to make some sort of distraction. Hmm, there's a ladder on the side of the building."

Simon squeezed her shoulder sympathetically.

Etta pulled her eyes away from the binoculars, and looked at Simon. "Do you have my back?"

Simon nodded. "Always."

Then she handed over the the gun and spare ammo.

"Here, you might need these if I screw up." she said.

"What are you going to..." Simon started to ask, then shut up, knowing he wasn't going to get an explanation anyway.

Etta turned her gaze back towards the Kresge Building, and reached out to feel the minds around it, inside it, and most importantly, on top of it. She looked at the figure of the tall, blond-haired woman standing on the roof, and concentrated.

After nearly a minute of effort, she gave up. As Olivia had said earlier, one Cortexiphan subject couldn't affect another. She reached out again and found another mind.

Peter froze mid-sentence, his blue eyes widening in shock.

Dad? This is Etta, obviously. I'm going to try something a little crazy. I don't have time to explain, I already have a headache. When I do this, you guys have to go down the ladder and run to safety, as fast as you can. I don't know how long I'll be able to keep it up.

Peter turned to the others on the roof. "Etta says we have to go down the ladder, now. She has something planned."

"I'd say she's already started," Astrid said, "...all of the Observers have stopped moving."

Walter and Peter both looked over the edge. The suited bald men were standing motionless around the building.

"Amazing..." said Walter, "I wonder if..."

"We have to go," interrupted Peter, "Walter, you first, then Astrid."

Walter looked at his watch. "We have eight minutes to get to a safe distance."

 

Etta broke mental contact with Peter, and turned her gaze towards the grey suited, armed men marching toward the building. She turned her mind's eye back several hours, to the symbol drawn in orange on the whiteboard in Bell's room that she had studied so intently this morning.

Earlier, Etta didn't know why the Paralysis Rune fascinated her so much, why she needed to study it so thoroughly. Now she understood. Subconsciously, she knew it could be another weapon in her arsenal. She knew she could do this.

When she'd frozen the Observer's before, back at the Resistance base, it'd been a frantic attempt to defend her parents. She'd instinctively shoved all of her thoughts into another mind, effectively causing a seizure, and it had bought her a few precious seconds.

This time, she knew what she was doing. Instead of haphazardly shoving everything in her head into another, she would send one specific image.

Etta reached out to all the minds she felt surrounding the lab, and pushed the image of Bell's Paralysis Rune into all of them. It worked exactly as she'd hoped it would. In unison, the Observers stopped short and gazed blankly into space, each of them having lost all voluntary motor function.

Doing this to one mind would have been trivial. Doing it to several hundred at once was pure agony. It felt like someone was slowly pushing ice-cold needles dipped in hot sauce into her eyes. Etta heard herself sob, felt something wet drip down her cheeks, but kept pushing.

If she had to nuke her own mind to give her family an opportunity to escape, then so be it.

 

Walter was first to the reach the ground, followed closely by Astrid. Together the two of them made their way toward the pile of rubble that Peter had pointed out as their destination, carefully avoiding touching the motionless Observers.

It was a truly eerie experience, walking through rank after rank of motionless, suited bald men.

On the top of the broken concrete berm, they found Etta and Simon. Etta was pale, her skin covered with a sheen of sweat, and she completely ignored their arrival as she continued her telepathic assault.

Walter glanced at his watch again. "Four minutes."

"You're next, Liv." Peter said, motioning toward the latter.

Olivia glared at him, and continued to point her pistol on the door leading to the rooftop. Peter sighed.

"It's only because I'm the heaviest one here. If the ladder is going to break, it'll break when I'm on it, and in that case it's better to have everyone else off the roof already. It has nothing to do with you being pregnant. I promise."

Olivia looked at him skeptically, bit her lower lip as she considered the situation.

"I'm not being chivalrous here. I know you hate that." Peter said in his most sincere tone of voice.

Olivia holstered her pistol, mounted the ladder and climbed down. At the bottom she sprinted for the berm, concern for her daughter starting to overcome that for her husband. She crested the rise and dropped prone beside Walter, who was taking Etta's pulse.

"How is she?" Olivia asked quietly.

She resisted the urge to touch Etta, to try to offer some sort of comfort, because she knew all too well how hard it was to concentrate when using Cortexiphan abilities. Of course, in her case it was to prevent incinerating everyone nearby, but she imagined Etta's situation was similar.

"I don't know," Walter replied. "She's running a slight fever. Her pulse and breathing are elevated. I don't really know what any of that means, though."

Astrid pointed. "Here comes Peter."

 

Peter used a trick he'd learned in Prague, running from the cops. He gripped the outside rails of the ladder with the instep of his boots and slid down, using his hands to control his descent. Halfway down, the metal finally wore through his gloves and started cutting into his hands. He gritted his teeth and ignored the pain in his palms. Seconds later, his boots touched the ground, and he too sprinted for the berm.

Peter reached the others with thirty seconds to spare. He dropped to the earth next to them and nodded to Olivia.

Olivia touched Etta's cheek gently, then stroked her fingers through her blond hair, so similar to her own. "Etta, honey. You can stop now, we're all safe. You saved us."

Etta's concentration broke, her eyes rolled up and her head dropped to the ground.

Around the Kresge building, the previously paralyzed Observers resumed marching on the structure, as if somebody had flicked their switches from on to off to on again. And on the roof, Eunice reached the end of its countdown.

In the core of the device, the five cylinders of anti-matter lowered their containment fields. In an instant, five grams of anti-matter annihilated five grams of normal matter, and the resulting burst of radiant energy was channeled to power the rest of the device.

The extradimensional sphere that formed instantly expanded out to its maximum volume, distorting what lay inside. Then it twisted itself out of existence, and it was as if a guillotine came down on the molecules of earth and air at its periphery, cleaving them, leaving a blue flash of newly created ions, and nothing else. Eunice, along with whatever was within a hundred meters of it, passed from this universe into something beyond, taking the mass of Observers inside the Kresge building with it, leaving behind a thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the vacuum, and a crater fifty meters across.

Inside the sphere, the Observers had just enough time to realize they'd been duped before the laws of physics rewrote themselves into a new codex, one hostile to organic life.

"Walter Bishop," Captain Windmark thought, "I should have killed you, when I had the chance."

Then his awareness of anything fluttered away, like a flock of rainbow butterflies.

Peter stared in wonder at the perfectly hemispherical area scooped out of the earth. All of the matter inside had been swept away into its own pocket universe.

"It worked, Dad," he said with a grin, "...and we didn't blow up the world!"

Walter gave him a brief grin, then frowned.

"Come on. We need to get Henrietta to the hospital before all hell breaks loose in the city."

 

Etta awoke with her eyes closed, and knew immediately she was in a hospital. The steady beep of a monitor, and the scent of antiseptic told her that much. She sighed, and opened her eyes.

The light was dim in the hospital room, as it was apparently late at night. After her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she noticed her mother was sitting in a chair next to Etta's bed, the tablet she was reading casting ghostly light and shadows on her features. Beyond, she could see her father slumped in another chair, sound asleep, his hands wrapped tightly with bandages.

"Mom?" she whispered.

Olivia looked up and smiled, put the tablet on the nightstand next to the bed, then reached over to clasp Etta's hand.

"Hey, good to see you awake. You had us worried."

Olivia leaned forward and brushed an errant lock of hair out of Etta's face.

"How long was I out?" Etta asked.

"Three days. We've been taking shifts, sitting with you. Don't worry...the doctors said there wouldn't be any permanent damage. Just acute exhaustion. You lost something like fifteen pounds. Walter thinks that's what supplies the energy for your thought projection ability."

Etta rolled onto her side to face Olivia.

"How are you? And Dad...and everybody. What's going on?"

Olivia smiled again, reached over and caressed Peter's cheek. "Peter? Etta is awake."

Peter groaned a little, sat up straight in his chair and stretched, then smiled at them. "Hey, Princess. You had us worried. You'll be glad to know, it worked."

Etta raised an eyebrow. "It worked?"

"Yeah. The Observers are gone. Broyles put the city under martial law soon after – mainly so no one would start taking revenge on the Loyalists. The Natives are taking over. It's going to be...interesting for a while."

Peter grinned about the last, then turned to Olivia.

"Did you show her?" he asked.

Olivia smiled, retrieved the tablet from the nightstand and turned it to face Etta. On the screen was a cloudy greyscale image. Etta frowned, not understanding what she was looking at.

"Etta Bishop, meet your little brother. He's only a few weeks old, but the doctors told me he's in perfect health."

Etta smiled, and started to say something, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door. They looked to the doorway, and found Nina Sharp, in her motorized wheelchair.

"He wants to talk to you, Olive." Nina said, "Room 206."

Olivia nodded, and left the room after giving Etta a quick kiss on the cheek. Nina rolled inside, stopping her chair beside Peter.

"How are you, young lady?" she asked.

Etta rolled onto her back and yawned.

"Exhausted. I think I could sleep for another week."

Etta yawned once more, closed her eyes and drifted away.

 

Phillip Broyles looked up at the small knock at his hospital room door, and stared as Olivia Dunham walked into the room. He looked her and down.

She looked exactly as he remembered her, from twenty years ago.

"Phillip." Olivia acknowledged. "Nina said you wanted to talk to me."

Broyles nodded.

"It's good to see you again, Olivia. It's nice to know the best agent I ever had made it through."

Olivia smiled, pulled a chair up next to his bed and took his hand.

Broyles squeezed her hand in return, and continued.

"I'm going to be blunt. I'm dying. I've recommended you to the government, such as it is, for my replacement as Director of Fringe Division, and they've already approved you as Acting Director, since I'm stepping down tomorrow. I have every reason to believe they'll approve you. You're certainly the most qualified candidate we have."

"I'm not sure what to say, sir." Olivia said, then amended, "...that's not true. I'm not certain I want a desk job."

"You'd refuse a dying man's last request?" Broyles said, mock seriousness in his tone of voice.

"Well, when you put it like that, sir...it'd be an honor."


	15. Chapter 15

"We are agreed then?" September asked April.

The two Observers remaining in existence were at the far end of time, wearing thick goggles to protect their eyesight as they watched a bloated, crimson sun start to consume the Earth. Although time is relative, they had both just spent a significant amount of it scouring timelines and dimensions finding and marking clones of William Bell. They met here, at the end of it all, to consult.

"Yes. We cannot allow William Bell to achieve virtual immortality through the use of clones and soul magnets," April replied.

September nodded, and the two of them watched with interest as the ocean flashed into a cloud of superheated steam. They morphed through time mere seconds before the scalding cloud reached them.

 

Etta spent a full week in the hospital, the boredom of complete bed rest interrupted only by daily visits from Simon in the morning, and from her father and grandfather in the evening. Not being directly employed by Fringe Division, Peter and Walter weren't as affected by the chaos of the Observers' departure as Olivia and Astrid. Peter always assured her that Olivia would have been there if she could have, but her duties kept her away.

Which brought on a flash of long buried childhood memory. Peter had been a constant presence in her life when she had been little, there when she woke in the morning, watching over her as she played with the cow at the lab, kissing booboos and tucking her in at night. Olivia had fluttered in and out of her awareness, a loving and welcome presence whenever available. It amused Etta that the pattern was repeating itself, twenty years on.

Etta insisted on checking herself out on the morning of her seventh day. The process took two hours, with the doctors and nurses insisting at every step that this wasn't recommended.

As soon as Etta left the hospital, she could feel it. A hush lay over the city, as if everyone were dreading what would happen next. There were few vehicles on the streets, and most of the ones she saw were Fringe Division armored personal carriers. Apparently all the Tactical Units had been deployed to keep order.

For all that, she saw no mobs, no burning buildings or vehicles, and no violence, or signs of any having previously occurred. It was already an improvement over life under the Observers. She hailed a cab and headed downtown, strode through the doors into Fringe Divison HQ and flashed her ID at the scanner on the wall.

"Acknowledged, Agent Blake," the speaker beneath the scanner said in a soothing, feminine voice. "Per the Director's orders, you are on restricted duty for medical reasons. The Director would like to see you as soon as possible. She is in her office on the tenth floor. Have a good day."

Etta wondered how Mom knew she'd left the hospital, as she moved to the elevators.

 

Olivia Dunham-Bishop, Acting Director, Fringe Division read the sign, in simple block letters, on the wall outside the only office on the tenth floor. Inside the spacious office, formerly that of General Broyles, Olivia was yelling at somebody on the video screen mounted in the wall.

No longer a field agent or rebel leader, she wore a power suit – navy blue blazer over a white blouse, gray skirt and high heels. It looked both strange and somehow, right.

"Vance," Olivia hissed, "...if I hear of even one reprisal against Loyalists, I'll have you on trial for terrorism inside of a week. I'll roll your entire network too – or have you forgotten that I know all of your cells, since I took them over from you?"

Olivia took a deep breath, then continued, "...we have to do this like a civilized society, Vance. Deep down, you know that. Otherwise, we'll have a civil war. Help me, don't fight me. There might even be a place for you, in the new government that's forming."

The burly man on the wall screen, nodded, still frowning. "I'll think about it," and the screen went blank.

Olivia turned at the sound of applause from the door, saw Etta clapping her hands and hooting encouragement.

Olivia shook her head. "Awful child," she muttered, before stepping forward to caress her daughter's cheek affectionately, "...how are you feeling?"

"Still a little tired, but I couldn't stand lying in that hospital bed any longer," Etta said with a grin.

"I was about to order lunch, do you want to join me?"

Etta nodded, "I could eat something."

In truth, Etta was famished. Since she'd planned to check herself out of the hospital today, she had refused the bland breakfast she'd been offered.

Olivia used the wall screen to order Chinese for two from a nearby takeout restaurant, then the two of them sat down to talk at the small conference table in the spacious office.

"So, what's the situation? I saw a lot of tactical vehicles on the way, but no riots or anything." Etta asked.

Olivia shook her head.

"Just being cautious. The Observers have disappeared, the Loyalists are understandably nervous, some of the Resistance are itching for a fight, and in the midst of all this we have a new Director of Fringe Division, namely me. It hadn't sunk in that Fringe was the de facto national police force until Broyles gave me the job."

Presently, their lunch arrived, brought up from the lobby by one of the junior agents who manned the front desk. After they had distributed the cardboard and plastic cartons over the table, they started eating.

"How is General Broyles?" Etta asked, during a short pause where they traded dishes.

Olivia frowned. "They're keeping him comfortable. It won't be long."

After they finished their meal and disposed of the leavings, Olivia had to make another call, using the wall screen again. When is she finished, she joined her daughter at the conference table once again, and filled her in on current events.

"I gave Astrid a promotion and put her in charge of the west coast. She'll be running things out of the Los Angeles office. Your Simon is on the north side, checking out reports of looters at the power plant."

"My Simon? I think you and Dad are making assumptions about my relationship with him."

"Not really, but your father and I worked together for three years before we got together. And...you could do worse."

"I think I want to change the subject..." Etta said, making Olivia smile and nod.

"Okay. Peter and Walter are in New York, negotiating with Nina Sharp over the sale of their company," Olivia said with an impish, raised eyebrow.

Etta's eyes widened. In all of their visits, neither Peter nor Walter had mentioned anything about a company.

"What company? What went on while I was in the hospital?" she asked.

Olivia rolled her eyes.

"Peter insisted on forming a corporation, Bishop Energetics, to hold the patents to their antimatter technology. So that Massive Dynamic would be forced to buy them out, you see. It only exists on paper, really, and it's only assets are Walter and Peter. Walter could care less about the money, but I get the impression this has been a fantasy of Peter's for a while."

"How much money are we talking about, here?" Etta asked.

Olivia shrugged. "How much is solving the energy crisis worth? According to Peter, if it works out like he expects it will, the Bishop family will suddenly be very wealthy."

 

William Bell looked up from the hide he was tanning and frowned at his visitors.

September and April had appeared, together with a confused looking young man, about twenty years old, with a lanky build, long black hair and brown eyes. He wore a tie died tee shirt and shorts made of what appeared to be hemp.

"Who is this?" Bell growled to the Observers, as he returned to his chore.

"This," said April in the typical Observer monotone, "...is William Bell."

Bell nodded and sighed at this.

The young man squinted at each of them in turn, before speaking.

"Where the hell am I? Who are you guys? Who is this old dude?" he asked, growing increasingly alarmed.

"This," said September in the typical Observer monotone, "...is also William Bell. More precisely, you are a clone of him."

Young Bell boggled at the older version of himself. "Whaaa?"

In the midst of his confusion, the two Observers disappeared, which didn't help his mental state at all. He turned round and round, peering at the interior of the wooden fort that surrounded him.

"Calm down," growled Older Bell to the Younger, "...I'm afraid you're going to be here for a while."

"The drugs have to wear off sometime," Younger Bell stated with certainty.

 

Later that afternoon Etta unlocked the front door to the Bishop residence and stepped inside. She walked through the empty rooms and stared. With no one else here, not her parents, Walter, Astrid or even that old lecher, William Bell, the house just didn't feel like home.

She sighed and shook her head, went to her room and changed into a simple tee shirt and sweat pants, walked back out into the living room and laid down on the old couch. Paranoia led her to place her holstered hyper-v pistol on the coffee table nearby.

She laid back and closed her eyes...and was startled out of her dreamless slumber by the sound of the front door opening. She sat up and seized her pistol from its holster, pointing the muzzle toward the kitchen, where she heard the door closing.

"Etta? You here?" she heard Simon Foster call.

"Here!" she called back.

Belatedly, she noticed from the change in the shadows on the wall that several hours had passed. It was now early evening, and she had the fuzzy headed feeling of being suddenly awakened from deep sleep. She put her pistol back on the table and rubbed her eyes as Simon walked into the room. He was wearing full riot armor, save for the helmet.

"Is it that bad out?" Etta asked.

Simon shook his head.

"We're just being cautious. Apparently your mum doesn't want anybody to get themselves killed her first week on the job. How are you? I stopped by the hospital and you'd checked out."

"I'm okay. Still tired. Mom says I can't go back to work until I gain all my weight back."

She scooted over on the couch, and patted the cushion beside her. Simon raised an eyebrow, but sat down next to her.

"Don't you think that's reasonable? I mean losing fifteen pounds in the space of an hour just can't be healthy. I understand you think Peter and Olivia are too..."

Etta shook her head. "It's not that," she insisted.

Simon smiled kindly. "What is it then?"

Etta sighed and fidgeted.

"I just don't...do well without something to work for. Since I was fourteen, my goal in life was to find my parents. That's why I joined Fringe Division...I figured it was the best way to find information on them. And it was. But now here I am, twenty four years old, I've succeeded, and now I don't know what to do."

Simon cocked his head, a sympathetic expression on his face.

"Do you want to stay in Fringe?" he asked quietly.

Etta shrugged. "I don't know. But at the same time, it's the only thing I'm trained for."

Simon nodded, and looked her up and down before replying.

"An opportunity will come along. You'll just have to recognize and act on it. You're a smart young woman and I have confidence you'll find your way."

Etta looked at him, as if she seeing him for the first time, then gave him a fierce hug. "Thank you!"

Simon chuckled. "All right. I should get back to work. All these riots aren't going to suppress themselves."

 

The population of the compound back in the depths of time grew steadily over the following weeks, as the Observers repeatedly appeared and left bewildered clones of William Bell. The fort gradually became an all-male community of paranoid genius sociopaths of varying ages.

Naturally, they gave the fort the ironic name of Belltopia and attempted to design their ideal society. At first, it sort of worked, until the younger Bell clones started to realize that they were doing the majority of physical chores.

This was only natural, the population of older Bells explained – the younger Bells were more physically capable, after all. But resentment remained, and naturally factions began to appear. Then those factions fragmented, and began to segregate themselves along lines of varying philosophical beliefs. For a while, the Lockeish, social contract philosophers held power and things were fairly peaceful.

When the followers of Nietzsche showed up, it all started to go to hell, and the first fatal "accidents" started to occur.

Through it all, the Observers watched, unseen.

 

Later that evening, Etta was heating a can of turkey noodle soup on the stove when Walter and Peter arrived home from their trip to New York.

"...told you, it gave us an advantage in the negotiations," Peter was saying as he entered the house with Walter.

"Yes, you're far better at extorting money out of people than I am..." Walter replied, then hastily added, "...oh, I mean that in the best way, son!"

At first, she barely recognized her father. He was wearing a dapper smoke grey suit and trousers over a crisp new white shirt, had shaved...and was wearing glasses. Not sunglasses, but a pair of wire framed prescription lenses.

"Henrietta!" Walter crowed happily upon seeing his granddaughter, before heading straight to the refrigerator.

"Princess!" Peter said, giving Etta an affectionate hug. She kissed his oddly smooth cheek, and when he released her, tapped the bridge of his nose.

"What's this, Dad?" she teased.

Peter frowned. "Headaches. Olivia insisted I go to an eye doctor."

Etta chuckled then they both turned and looked at Walter, who was busy putting pickles and ice cream into the blender. When he noticed their stares, he sheepishly admitted, "Olivia got me hooked."

"So, how did the negotiations go?" Etta asked, changing the subject to an obvious one.

"Heh. Well, Massive Dynamic didn't have two billion dollars in cash on hand, so now Walter and I own 25% of the non-voting stock, between us, and we both have consulting jobs, working on the anti-matter tech."

Etta's eyes shot for the ceiling, and she gasped in surprise. "Holy...how much is that worth?"

Peter shrugged. "I don't know. I'll have to look at the stock price tomorrow. The thing is, now we have to buckle down and come up with a safe anti-matter device, one that can't be used as a bomb. They'd like to have something on the market in two years."

Just then, they heard a polite rap on the door and Olivia walked into the kitchen, acknowledging them with a nod and a little smile.

"Mom! We're rich!" Etta said brightly.

Olivia nodded. "I heard..." Then she sighed tiredly.

"Hon?" Peter stepped forward and cupped Olivia's cheek in his hand, getting a loving smile in return, "...you okay?"

Olivia nodded, then shrugged. "I got the call from the hospital before I left work. Broyles died."

A glum silence settled over the family, which was interrupted by the oblivious Walter turning on the blender. After he finished blending, he poured the light brown concoction he'd just created into a tall glass, which he handed to Olivia.

"Pickle and strawberry ice cream shake, dear," he said with a wink and a smile.

 

William Bell pursued his quarry through the thick undergrowth, occasionally stopping to check the trail for blood. Moments before he had skewered some sort of proto-rabbit with a bolt from the handmade crossbow he held; unfortunately the accuracy of the weapon, or of the wielder, left something to be desired. The bolt had only wounded the rodent, thus he was required to chase after his slowly exsanguinating lunch.

Society had broken down in the Bell compound. No longer content with mere accidents, several open murders had been committed. It was safer to move out of the compound and live on your own, which Bell had done two weeks ago.

Of course, each Bell clone had come to the identical conclusion. In the space of a fortnight , the compound had been abandoned.

Hearing a rustle in the bushes, Bell raised his weapon and stepped off the path to investigate. Two steps later the ground gave way he plummeted into a pit trap made for big game. Some other ambitious Bell clone was making a living in the area.

A shadow covered him. Bell looked up into the unsympathetic eyes of another William Bell, one of the youngest, clad only in a loin cloth.

"So it's come to this," growled Bell, "...Lord of the Flies, and all that."

Bell raised his crossbow and fired. This time his aim was true, the bolt hit the younger clone in the throat.

Nearby but unseen, April scribbled in his notebook, and nodded toward his companion.

"This is a fascinating experiment," he commented to September.

September nodded.

"Yes. But I suspect it shall have run its course very soon."

 

Etta Bishop opened the door the house, called "I'm home!"' dumped her backpack on the kitchen table and headed for the basement.

When she had announced her intention to enroll at the newly reopening MIT to pursue an engineering degree, Peter had broken down laughing so hard that he was unable to stand.

"Peter..." Olivia, six months pregnant with her little brother and showing, scolded him, "...you should encourage her, not..."

"What? You think I can't cut it at your alma mater?" Etta had demanded, crossing her arms.

Peter gasped for breath.

"No, Princess it's just...oh, the irony!" Peter started laughing again.

When they explained the whole story - Peter dropping out of high school, faking a chemistry degree to teach at MIT, being erased from time and then given fraudulent credentials from MIT upon his return - yes, it was funny.

The next day, Peter and Walter had presented her with a trust fund - more than enough money to pay for her education. It seemed opportunity had knocked.

The basement of the old house had been converted into a combination laboratory and daycare, so that Walter and Peter could work on the antimatter reactor project and keep watch over the latest addition to the family, while Olivia was at Fringe HQ. One side consisted of an expensive set of computers installed by Massive Dynamic, while the other side was an elaborate play area.

Etta glanced over at Walter and Peter examining a holographic 3d schematic of one of their designs, then snatched her little brother out of his playpen and went to join them.

Charlie the Giggle Monster, as Etta liked to call him, was now six months old.

"Hey, Princess, how was school?" Peter asked.

He gave her a peck on the cheek and ruffled his son's fuzzy blond hair. Charlie giggled and drooled happily.

"Great. I feel like it's where I belong," Etta replied with a smile, as she shifted her baby brother to a more comfortable position on her hip, and peered over her father's shoulder at a simulated matter-antimatter annihilation.

This was where she'd always belonged.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is simply the song I was listening to when I started writing, Into Your Hideout, by Pilot Speed. Titles are just labels for convenience, anyway.


End file.
